Dr Bawa-Garba Research Articles

Cross-sectional exploration of the impact of the Dr Bawa-Garba case on doctors’ professional behaviours and attitudes towards the regulator

ObjectiveThis paper examines the impact on doctors’ attitudes towards the General Medical Council (GMC) and on professional behaviours (reflective practice and raising concerns) following the Dr Bawa-Garba case.DesignA cross-sectional survey...

Trainee engagement with reflection in online portfolios: A qualitative study highlighting the impact of the Bawa-Garba case on professional development

Background Reflection is an essential tool for postgraduate medical training, yet fear of exposing incompetence is a known barrier for engagement with reflection. In the UK, this fear may have been amplified by the case of Dr Bawa-Garba, whose reflective e-portfolio entries informed a General Medical Council investigation resulting in the loss of her licence to practice. Aim To identify themes GP trainees commonly explore in e-portfolio entries, and whether their reflective e-portfolio entries have changed following the Bawa-Garba case. Method A phenomenological approach was applied. Semi-structured interviews continued to data saturation in a purposive sample of trainees (7) and trainers (4) recruited from a South Yorkshire GP training scheme. Transcript data were assigned to a coding framework with iterative thematic analysis. Results Dominant emergent themes were ‘difficulty’ and ‘challenge’. All trainees described reluctance to submit significant event analyses (SEAs) on mistakes and near misses for fear of jeopardising their careers. International medical graduates were disproportionately affected by the challenges reflection posed. Conclusion Following the Bawa-Garba case, trainees are disengaging with SEAs to reduce the risk of self-incrimination. Further guidance with which trainees can navigate their reflective e-portfolios is required to retain the value of reflection as a tool for professional development.

Promoting public confidence in the medical profession: Learning from the case of Dr. Bawa-Garba

In a 2015 prosecution which divided public opinion, Dr Bawa-Garba was convicted of gross negligence manslaughter and sentenced to 2-years’ imprisonment, suspended for 2 years. The post-conviction litigation which sought to determine whether and when Dr Bawa-Garba could return to clinical practice threatened to destabilise the already fragile relationship between the medical profession and its regulator, the General Medical Council. At the heart of this litigation lay the regulator’s quest to maintain and promote public confidence in the profession, in a case where the doctor concerned was not regarded as posing a future risk to patient safety. Using the Bawa-Garba litigation, this commentary examines the position and use of the nebulous concept of ‘public confidence’ within the fitness to practise framework for doctors. Although the authors’ observations arise specifically from a case decided in the UK, ‘public confidence’ is a touchstone concept in professional regulation regimes around the world and so these observations have relevance beyond this jurisdiction. The authors argue that, for too long, use of the rhetoric of public confidence in the regulation of the medical profession has been characterised by an unsatisfactory lack of transparency, excessive deference by the courts to regulatory tribunals and that research is increasingly signalling that instinctual ‘expert’ judgements on the issue of ‘what the public think’ may be unreliable.

Clinical reflective practice

Clinical reflective practice

Could it be you? The impact of a medico-legal awareness event on junior doctors' understanding of legal issues

In the wake of the Dr Bawa-Garba case, a heightened level of anxiety existed around medico-legal issues. An evening lecture session for doctors, harnessing local expertise, set out to clarify: A lecture evening was arranged to dispel a number of the myths surrounding legal issues …

Reflective practice and gross negligence manslaughter.

The collective imagination of the junior doctor workforce was captured by the case of Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba, a paediatrics registrar given a 2-year suspended sentence for gross negligence manslaughter. Up and down the country, outrage and half-truths circulated in the doctors’ mess. The rumour that the GMC had used Dr Bawa-Garba’s written reflections against her was particularly difficult to dispel. It was not strictly true — Dr Bawa-Garba’s portfolio reflections had not been used by either side — but nevertheless resulted in many doctors discovering that theoretically the GMC could use their own reflections against them. The backlash that followed was at the top of the agenda in February 2018 when Jeremy Hunt commissioned a rapid review of medical gross negligence manslaughter, led by Professor Sir Norman Williams. The review, which released its report on …

Drs Bramhall and Bawa-Garba and the rightful domain of the criminal law

In the wake of two recent high-profile, controversial cases involving the prosecution and conviction of Drs Bramhall and Bawa-Garba, this article considers when it is socially desirable to criminalise doctors’...

The Case of Dr Bawa-Garba and the Tension between Fitness to Practise, the Criminal Law and the Supervisory Jurisdiction of the Court

1. This article considers the recent case of Dr Bawa-Garba and the GMC,1 which saw the Court of Appeal examining the relationship between the decisions of a jury, a specialist tribunal and the cour...

Communicating antimicrobial resistance and stewardship in the national press: Lessons from sepsis awareness campaigns

1The Review on AMR was an expert panel commissioned by the UK Government in 2014 tasked with analysing the economic and social impacts of AMR and proposing solutions to these. 2NICE is a UK non-departmental public body that sponsored by but separate from the Department of Health that produces evidence-based guidance for health practitioners. 3NHS England is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department of Health that oversees planning and delivery of health services in England. 4Note that circulation of the News of the World ceased in July 2011; the Sun on Sunday was launched by the same newsgroup in 2012, but is unavailable on the Nexis database.

The case of Dr Bawa-Garba: How the fallout can damage patient safety

The case of Dr Bawa-Garba: How the fallout can damage patient safety