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55 Medico-Legal J. 3 (1987)

handle is hein.journals/medlgjr55 and id is 1 raw text is: THE MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL Founded 1901 1987 Vol. 55 Part One EDITORIAL THE MEANING OF SERIOUS PROFESSIONAL MISCONDUCT Where a doctor is judged guilty of serious professional misconduct s 36 of the Medical Act 1983 provides that the Professional Conduct Committee of the General Medical Council may, if it thinks fit, erase the doctor's n1ame from the register, suspend him for a maximum of twelve months, or make his registration conditional on such restrictions as the Committee may think fit to impose for the protection of members of the public or in his own interests. Such conditions may be imposed for a period of not more than three years. The Committee also has the option of admonishing and warning a doctor, and against such a result, the doctor has no right of appeal. The phrase serious professional misconduct replaces the earlier (and more sinister) term, infamous conduct in a professional respect, but no change in meaning or standard was apparently intended. Indeed, infamous conduct in a professional respect was defined as serious misconduct judged according to the rules, written and unwritten, which govern the medical profession. If it is shown that a practitioner has done something in pursuit of his profession which would reasonably be regarded as disgraceful or dishonourable by his professional brethren of good repute and competence, it is open to the discip- linary committee to say that he has been guilty of infamous conduct in a professional respect. The question is, not whether what was done was an infamous thing for anyone else to do, but whether it was an infamous thing for a medical practitioner to do. (Halsbury's Laws,Vo126, page 64,3rd Edn). Section 29 of the Medical Act 1858, (repealed; see s 33 of the 1956 Act), empowered the GMC to erase a doctor's name from the register if he was adjudged guilty of infamous conduct. This was a severe penalty, and the earlier Acts, now replaced by the 1983 Act, did not provide for the lesser penalties of suspension or conditional registration. Accordingly, the GMC committee had to feel satisfied that the conduct was of such a kind as to merit striking off the register. The most famous definition was that given by Lopes LJ in