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General Medical Council Complaint Investigation Lawyers

All GPs and Specialists in the U.K. are required to register with the General Medical Council and adhere to the published rules in the GMC Good Medical Practice. Breaching these professional rules of conduct may lead to complaints by patients and an investigation by the GMC and a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service Panel FTP hearing. If the MPTS Panel finds that your fitness to practise is impaired, it could have devastating consequences for you and your professional career. If you have been accused of medical misconduct you should contact a solicitor to guide you through the complicated GMC complaints process and prepare an effective defence on your behalf. You certainly shouldn't consider preparing your own courtroom defence

The GMC Complaints Procedure

All complaints from patients are directed to the General Medical Council for investigation. Complaints can be upheld on the grounds of misconduct, recent criminal conviction, health issues, or an inability to speak fluent English. You will be notified of the complaint and issued with a Rule 4 letter stating the full terms of the allegations against you. It is important to have proper legal representation right from the outset to ensure that your rights are not prejudiced and that the entire procedure is handled with the utmost professionalism and accuracy.

A full investigation will be conducted by the GMC to accrue evidence regarding the allegations made. At the conclusion of these investigations, a Rule 7 letter will be sent to you with full details of the complaint and the evidence against you. You will be given 28 days from the date of this letter to submit a substantive response which will be taken into consideration at the FTP hearing. This is where a dedicated team of solicitors experienced in medical law and the defence of doctors and specialists who have face patient complaints can guide you in preparing the best response.

Before the Fitness to Practise hearing your solicitor will help you build an accurate chronology of events in strict confidence in order to prepare an accurate defence on your behalf. If the MTPS Panel finds you guilty of the allegations during the Fitness to Practise hearing, it may result in conditions being imposed on your GMC registration, suspension from the registration, or removal from the Medial Council Register.

A professional discipline solicitor will negotiate terms on your behalf and aim to reach a settlement to ensure the least amount of damage to you and your career. If you are involved in a GMC complaint procedure, you will need the help of a team of solicitors to give you expert legal advice and representation from the initial complaint to the final hearing and outcome.

Fitness To Practise Defence Solicitors Explained

A lawyer is a professional whose main duty is to advise and represent others in legal matters. This is due to the fact that the individual is well-versed in matters concerning the law, courtesy of many years in law school.

The professional is governed by various guidelines and principles that they are required to adhere to, an important one being confidentiality. This is one of the major virtues that must be upheld by any professional who practises as a lawyer.

Just as any profession has various specialisations, so does law, and this brings us to GMC defence solicitors who specifically deal with representing medical practitioners before health care regulators. A significant number are located in London, at firms such as Blackfords LLP. One of the health care regulators that defence solicitors defend registrants against is the general medical council (GMC).

A medical practitioner can be accused of a medical offence that can lead to the practitioner losing their job, hence this is where the GMC defense solicitors come in and defend the registrant.

A registrant is a doctor who is accused. As mentioned earlier, any lawyer needs to be confidential in regards to matters that are discussed with his or her client, and this is one example of a medical offence that could prove disastrous for the accused doctor. The General Medical Council and General Dental Council are two separate regulators for their respective fields. Today lets look at the lawyers (defence solicitors) charged with the responsibility of representing the accused doctors. The procedure involved is as follows.

First, the accused doctor may face an internal disciplinary assessment by the employer, who might suggest that that the accused performed a crime. Examples would include sexually assaulting a patient, sneaking out drugs from the hospital or any misconduct set by the regulatory body. The process will continue from the initial notification, to the fitness to practice, to appeals against decisions until a hearing is set.

This process is very stressful to the medical practitioners, and a lawyer is absolutely required as representing yourself in court is a terrible idea. Experience is key here because in law, just as in any profession, experience really matters. Having an experienced defence solicitor who has battled it out in court against the regulatory body (GMC) is to your advantage because the lawyer is familiar with the procedure.

In regards to the cases involved they vary from one which is complicated to one that is piece of cake. All in all a defense solicitor is charged with the responsibility of advising the registrant on matters involving the case probably due to a misconduct set out by the GMC. To read more about GMC defence solicitors, see this page.