Regular readers here will be well aware with the contempt felt by DZ (in common with most doctors) for the process of appraisal and revalidation, and for the General Medical Council in their continued blind delusion that this process has some value in protecting the general public from underperforming or rogue practitioners.
There can be no better illustration of the futility of revalidation than the case of this man.
Mr Ian Paterson is exactly the sort of doctor that the GMC would have us believe that revalidation would pick up, and at an early stage. And yet for 13 years he was able to sail through appraisal every year, and perhaps 3 revalidation cycles. Could anything more illustrate the utter worthlessness of the process, and incompetence of the GMC. Every 5 years he was able to find the requisite number of colleagues to write a decent feedback despite his failings. Apart from anything else what the fuck were his anaesthetists doing about the butchery that was being performed on their patients. Far be it from me to suggest that these same anaesthetists were making a good living from Paterson's putting private patients their way.
To be fair, DZ has also known of colleagues who were cause for concern. But we all know the opprobrium that is heaped on the whistleblower, while the guilty escape.
Again. Appraisal and revalidation, is an experiment that has failed dismally.
I yam what I yam
2 hours ago