I have just visited the iwantgreatcare.com website. It was almost like visiting the website of the supporters of the British National Party, and I feel slightly sullied by the whole grubby experience.
I decided to conduct a simple experiment. I happened to have this week's British Medical Journal in front of me. I turned to the obituaries page. Now you tell me a doctor who doesn't look at the obituaries page.
So I typed in the 6 names that appear in my BMJ obituaries page [BMJ 2008; 337: 119]
I'm sure that the colleagues, friends and families of the following doctors:
- Dr Lisa Joan Fook (died from ovarian cancer on 19th July 2007)
- Dr Edmund Frederick Griffith (died from glioblastoma on 27th May 2008)
- Dr Peter Jesperson Lyne (died from cerebral Haemorrhage on 5th January 2008)
would be shocked to know that these doctors can be 'assessed' by random people even after they have died.
Shame on you for putting up such a ghastly site. Shame.
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15 comments:
I couldn't agree with you more.
This site, namely Iwantgreatcare, should be expunged from the Internet. There are proper procedures in place if you wish to complain about a doctor, and I am quite sure that if you wish to praise a doctor for the treatment you have received that a letter to him or her personally, or a letter to the hospital concerned would be well received. The problem with this website is that there are no controls over what can be said about a doctor, and anyway the information on such sites will always be subjective. After all, one man's meat is another man's poison.
It is interesting that many doctors' names have been omitted.
Why the gaps?
Why does he not have a comprehensive list of doctors?
I wonder how Dr Neil Bacon got hold of his information.
I trust he has not poached a list from DNUK or some other source where not all doctors are represented.
I wouldn't have known anything at all about the website if it hadn't been "advertised" here and probably the best thing to do with it is to ignore it until it goes away. I do note however that according to it there is only one psychiatrist in my whole county - now I knew the mental health care system was understaffed but.....
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I can't quite work out what the problem with sites such as these are? To me it seems no different than the kind of discussion which happens between patients about each and every doctor, and from the little I've seen seems more restrained than comments I've heard elsewhere.
Whether or not one approves of such sites, I rather suspect there will be more in the future, not just for doctors or teachers, but every profession.
I quite strongly disagree with the idea that if someone has a complaint against a doctor they can take it to the 'proper procedures'-certainly my personal experience of appalling behaviour from doctors left me far too upset and more importantly frightened to even consider that option. I did attempt to complain to PAL's after one particularly galling experience only to be told that was how men treated women in the doctor's country of origin and so it was something I just had to put up with!
Overall I can't help but feel that if there were more appropriate settings for such disputes to be aired it would mostly end in amicable resolution and very probably reduce legal action.
Bendy Girl
Dear Bendy girl,
I can relate to your comment, and would not want in any way to diminish your own personal experience.
I'm not quite sure why this has got me so angry, but it is really based on a false premiss. This is that it is predicated on a pure provider-client relationship - like assessing a washing machine: (the doctor-patient relationship is much more complex than that). What also annoys me is that a twerp like Neil Bacon (whom I have never met) is likely to be making money out of it. Finally it is the sheer anonymity and unaccountability of the whole process.
It stinks. It really stinks.
I agree that this site is badly implemented.
However, in all fairness this argument against the site is invalid. They forgot to remove a few doctors - it happens, so what? I am sure they will be removed when the listing is refreshed.
To mount a serious attack against the site, the argument should deal with the essence of the site not the details of the implementation.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I can't quite work out what the problem with sites such as these are? To me it seems no different than the kind of discussion which happens between patients about each and every doctor, and from the little I've seen seems more restrained than comments I've heard elsewhere.
Whether or not one approves of such sites, I rather suspect there will be more in the future, not just for doctors or teachers, but every profession.
I quite strongly disagree with the idea that if someone has a complaint against a doctor they can take it to the 'proper procedures'-certainly my personal experience of appalling behaviour from doctors left me far too upset and more importantly frightened to even consider that option. I did attempt to complain to PAL's ... it was something I just had to put up with!
In the ideal world the answer would be to improve the systems already in place. To make sure that PALS (or a similar service) provided a proper and easily accessible route of complaint (staffed by sympathetic and sensible people).
I think the lot of people are objecting to this because everything is in the public arena to an extreme. Your discussion with a friend is between two people not the entire world who can access the internet.
There are a lot of ways that a doctor can get on the wrong side of a patient (for example by simply offering a different diagnosis to the one that a patient wants). This site is leaving many good doctors vulnerable to attack by renegade patients who may have a vendetta. And because of patient confidentiality and the nature of the site Doctors can NOT defend themselves.
There are bad doctors out there, and my opinion (which may be an unpopular one) is that patients who have a bad experience need to develop the courage to complain THROUGH THE PROPER CHANNELS in order to prevent this from happening to other patients. The NHS needs to improve the PALS system to make this more palatable to some people. Hiding behind this website is not the answer.
(Sorry for the rather long comment)
I don't think he's purloined the names from DNUK, or if he has, he's done so poorly or incompletely.
I've just tried searching for a couple of friends whose only email is with DNUK, and they aren't listed.
Either way, the man's a c*nt and the website should be destroyed.
I have to ask if there something wrong with the 'proper chanels' for complaint?
Self-percieved-victims should not be required to 'develop the courage to complain through the proper chanels'. They should be provided with what a real victim needs to present a case that can be verified, if that isn't provided by the proper chanels then the proper channels should be changed.
This is not really a site for the investigation of complaints. That should be done at PCT/Hospital Trust level or if serious at the GMC.
This site is not a good idea, it is incomplete, unsafe, subjecy to abuse and character assassination, and has made me (a doctor who is really trying his best) angry and very anxious.
Sorry Jobbing Doctor. Get used to it. As a patient with more than 25 years experience of specialist consultations, I unreservedly welcome Iwantgreatcare.
If the likes of you succeed in closing it down in the UK, it will be very easy to duplicate in multiple alternative jurisdictions.
Anonymous,
I'm disappointed that you feel this is the way forward. I am not averse to feedback, but I do think that if we have ad hominem comments about doctors, then it is open to real abuse.
But since I am merely a GP, maybe your criticisms aren't in my sphere of understanding.
how would patients like it if we developed a rate your patient website?
Medicine shouldn't be a "beauty context" - it's about giving good advice. Some doctors work in areas where providing high quality advice nevertheless makes them very unpopular. It isn't fair for this website to ruin their reputation.
Interesting to know.
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