A few days ago it was suggested here that in British medical practise there is a suspiciously high corollation of roving hands to medicos of Indian extraction.  Well, today the story of the breast-mad Dr Kayode Falodun made it into the press and he, it seems, is a Nigerian.  So I thought I would check out how well-behaved these desperately needed saviours of the nation’s health really are, and roughly what proportion of miscreants are (a) foreign, (b) Indian.  Accordingly and without much hope of success, I visited the website of the General Medical Council, the doctor’s trade union and self-regulating authority.

The first thing I saw on the front page was a face-pic of a black woman with the suggestion of a doctor’s white coat at her neck.  She decorates the headline, “Diversity and Equal Opportunities Guides”.  Here we go again, I thought.  You can’t get away from it.

But no, this virtual paragon of virtuous practise is there not to tell the world of the GMC’s respec’ but to gently gull us.  The Diversity Guides she is publicising serve an entirely different purpose from the one you might expect.  They are there to put the doctor “in control”, ie to stop him being caught unawares by unprincipled money-grubbers, race lawyers and what-have-you.

It all seemed strangely, unexpectedly sane.  And then I remembered the pervasive fear of litigation that afflicts all doctors in the Western world, and how caution in diagnosis and treatment weights the intervention process, oftimes negatively, as a result.  The modern medical profession practises behind a stockade, and the most jealously guarded wall of that stockade is self-regulation.  The familiar pieties of our Marxist modernity simply cannot be permitted within, for they would corrode the regulatory mechanism and, with it, public trust.  Without the trust of the public the profession would be regulated from without in very short order, and that it most assuredly does not want.

So the doctor from tropical climes gets to be judged by the same standard as the natives.  If he is caught bringing the profession into disrepute he cannot be extended special consideration for the dusky hue of his epidermis.  The stakes are too high to excuse incompetence or other professional shortcoming, regardless of the long shadow of white racism - be it unwitting, institutional or, to be blunt, entirely imaginary.  In other words, the judging process is fair.

Equipped with this bracing perspective, I delved down into the GMC Press Area and found the March Events Calendar which, oh joy, lists Fitness to Practise Hearings.  Here we encounter Golak Prasad Jena who:-

On 5 April 2005 at Harrow Crown Court, Golak Prasad Jena was convicted following a guilty plea of two counts of indecent assault and was sentenced to a total of 18 months’ imprisonment and to be registered on the sexual offenders’ register for 10 years.

... and Dr Azhir Manzur Sarfraz who:-

was guilty of serious professional misconduct. At that hearing it was found proved that on two occasions Dr Sarfraz had acted in a manner that was inappropriate, indecent and an abuse of his professional position.

... and Dr Mohamed Bahgat Shar, of whom it is alleged:-

had acted in a way which was indecent and inappropriate towards a patient, and in a way which was inappropriate towards a colleague.

... and Dr Ratnasabapathy Rajakumar of whom:-

It is alleged that [he] engaged in inappropriate and unprofessional behaviour towards female colleagues

... Dr Said Arzhangi who, though he may not be a Sub-Continental, nevertheless is alleged to have:-

performed examinations on three patients that were likely to bring the medical profession into disrepute. Two of these examinations were also found to be inappropriate and one was found to be indecent and inappropriate. It was also found that Dr Arzhangi’s examination of a further patient was incompetent.

A small sample, maybe.  But a sample which outweighs oversexed Africans (2) and Middle-Easterners (1).  Of native Brits there are none.  In toto, over 60% of the cases current in the GMC’s disciplinary process are non-natives, and that ought to tell us something.  About 30% of NHS doctors are non-natives.  So non-natives are between three and four times more likely to commit an (alleged) offence against the CMG’s code of practise.  There may be one or two half-sound excuses for such a rate of non-native miscreance.  A difficulty in adapting to a strange and demanding medical culture in this country may perhaps be one.  But difficulty in keeping your disinfected digits off the ladies really isn’t a cultural problem, is it?  It’s a trouser problem.

UPDATE - 01.04.06

I note that the above link to the GMC’s Fitness to Practise Hearings has moved on to April.  But it doesn’t change things much.  The incidence of non-native names in the list, most of them new, is rock-solid at 60%.