(Competence, professional self regulation and the public interest)

Professor Rudolf Klein explores some of the questions raised in the GMC inquiry at Bristol from the perspective of a lay observer concluding that the case has revealed that doctors are unclear about what is involved in their responsibility to protect patients from harm from other doctors; doctors need training in communicating with each other; more stringent training requirements are needed before surgeons may operate independently and that more needs to be done to develop benchmarks against which performance can be judged.

Contact:

Professor Rudolf Klein, Professor of Social Policy, Centre for the Analysis of Social Policy, University of Bath, Bath [email protected]