A public point of view: Paola

Paola commented recently that: From where I am standing, the HPC has been protecting the professional against ACCOUNTABILITY. This has not helped her either: learning of the dire consequences of her many misguided actions and inappropriate interferences would have given her valuable feedback and helped her in her professional development and in her personal growth: the HPC has failed her too...

She continues:

"I always felt that there would be much more value for us in an apology and in a constructive use of the damage done to my son and myself as an opportunity for education and training, awareness and growth. The HPC does not do these things. In fact, and with reference to my previous post, the HPC does not do apologies either. The HPC does not do feelings and emotions and real people full stop..."

Paola's experience reveals more of the nature of this particular bureaucracy. It has been set up not as a pre-packaged or natural object without history, values, or character. It is a kind of living thing that can be assessed as a creature in its own right. In a previous blog I reported that Mr Williamson (one of the FTP panel chairmen) had pointed out that the HPC was similar to the GMC and that had inherited something from its predecessor (housed in the same building, and perhaps employing some of the same administrators and support staff) the Council for Professions Supplementary to Medicine. There is every reason to procede with an enquiry into the nature of this new thing, and not to assume that an organisation has no character nor that such is irrelevant. It is a necessary discipline to consider the character of the HPC and its conduct and to ask if it is fit for purpose.

There are also the unintended consequences. Paola raises this other point. "It seems to me that there may well be another worrying outcome of HPC regulation, a danger inherent in their structure and procedures: that the academic and professional standing of registrants under investigation will have a bearing on the outcome. In other words, that there will be a hierarchy of vulnerability to sanctions ..."

From my random attendance of FTP hearings I could not help but be struck by the absence of genuine cases raised by bona fide patients. So far there has been an angry and aggressive man shouting at an ambulance driver, a frightened colleague wishing to avoid another hearing about his own conduct, a training manager who thought he would be held responsible for an amblance drivers decisions, and a new recruit anxious not to be contaminated by any kind of accusation that she rules had not been obeyed.

The HPC has a particular nature, which has an effect on those it brings within its domain.