7 British Doctors

The strap line of the General Medical Council is “Regulating Doctors, Ensuring Good Medical Practice”. “Good Medical Practice” means you do not prescribe for yourself or for your family except in an emergency. Every year doctors are removed from the Medical Register because they do this.

Nonetheless, doctors do prescribe medicine for themselves, their families and their children, not least “to help them settle” at night. The medicine cabinet of some doctors is better stocked than the local pharmacy.

Rules have been rigorously enforced following the case of Dr Harold Shipman case, a doctor who murdered hundreds of his patients. Prescribing for yourself, your family and your children falls outside “Good Medical Practice”. Where a doctor did this and the child died, he or she would not only be removed from the medical register but would face a charge of manslaughter.

With a part-time locum General Practitioner, the scandal would fade quickly. When it happens to a Consultant Cardiologist at a major teaching Hospital, the consequences would be wider reaching and longer lasting.