Keeping the patient first

All doctors have some management responsibilities and many will face situations where these seem to conflict with their duty to patients.

We are consulting on draft new ethical guidance on difficult workplace issues faced by doctors including commissioning services, team-working and performance management.

The draft guidance, Good Management Practice: guidance for all doctors introduces a number of important changes to our existing guidance, including a duty for doctors to be open and honest with patients about how decisions are made when resources are limited.

‘Doctors are already used to balancing competing demands for resources, but delivering high quality patient care during a period of diminishing funding will be very challenging for all of us,’ said Professor Sir Peter Rubin, the Chair of the GMC.

‘We want our guidance for doctors involved in management – at whatever level – to be as relevant and helpful as possible and we're now consulting on a draft. We always listen to the feedback from our consultations and change what we do as a consequence, so please let us know your views.’

Concerns about patient safety

At the same time, we are also consulting on draft new guidance on raising and acting on concerns about patient safety.

Doctors have a vital duty to raise concerns about any practice they see which could be putting patients at risk. Senior doctors must encourage colleagues to raise concerns and must act on such concerns quickly and professionally.

We want to hear whether our guidance could provide any further support for doctors in making decisions about when to raise or act on concerns.

How can I get involved?

The consultation is open until 3 June 2011.

You can respond to the consultation through our website.

You can also request a hard copy or find out more by emailing standard.consult@gmc-uk.org.