The General Medical Council has set new targets to eliminate disproportionate complaints from employers about ethnic minority doctors and eradicate disadvantage and discrimination in medical education and training.
The targets, to be met by 2026 and 2031 respectively, focus on areas where clear evidence of disproportionality has been seen over time. They will hold the doctors’ regulator accountable for taking action and working through others to deliver change.
Following the judgment by Reading Employment Tribunal in the case of Mr Omer Karim, the General Medical Council (GMC) has sought legal advice on the ruling.
The Council of the GMC – the governing body made up of six medical and six non-medical members – has considered the ruling and its implications and taken the decision to appeal the tribunal’s judgment.
‘We know that many doctors feel discriminated against by the way in which referrals to the GMC are handled, and there remains much for us and others to do to change that.
Leaders from across general practice have demanded that the GMC takes action on the ‘incomprehensible’ decision to suspend a GP over ‘semantics’ involving her work laptop.
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service decision to suspend Dr Manjula Arora for a month for ‘dishonesty’ after telling an IT department she had been ‘promised’ a laptop has left the profession up in arms.
BMA council chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul said the ‘incomprehensible’ ruling will ‘add to many doctors’ fears about the GMC’s disproportionate and unfair approach to their regulatory system as it applies to the medical profession’.
A recent ruling that the GMC discriminated against a doctor on the grounds of race, calls into question the future role of the regulator, argue these authors
In a landmark case against the General Medical Council (GMC), an employment tribunal has ruled that a doctor was discriminated against on the grounds of race. The case was brought by Omer Karim, a consultant urologist, of Sudanese and Irish heritage, who worked at Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, now Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust. The Reading Employment Tribunal judges’ verdict, declared on 7 June 2021, is damning on how the GMC approached the case. [1] Karim claimed that he was targeted after he raised concerns about alleged poor practice at the hospital where he worked.
The BMA has urged the GMC to launch an urgent evaluation of its fitness-to-practise (FTP) procedure after a tribunal found it racially discriminated against a doctor.
Reading Employment Tribunal ruled that the GMC had discriminated against consultant urologist Dr Omer Karim because of his race during an investigation into his conduct.
The tribunal concluded that Dr Karim, who worked at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, Berkshire, had received ‘less favourable treatment’ than a white colleague during a GMC investigation in 2014.