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Naming of drugs: pass the epinephrine, please

1996; BMJ; Volume: 312; Issue: 7042 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1136/bmj.312.7042.1315

0959-8138

C. George Priya Doss,

Medical and Biological Sciences

its mechanisms for collecting, recording, and using data and is developing a programe for training staff in crosscultural awareness.It also plans to commission a prospective study to try to explain the rising proportion of overseas qualified doctors within the complaints procedure.A major challenge remains: how to balance the need for more accountability and visible uniformity in decision making with the need to leave room for interpretation and unforeseen circumstance.The GMC is right to resist imposing a rigid, all embracing definition of serious professional misconduct: this could never be flexible enough to cope with all eventualities.An alternative approach might be the one developed by the GMC for assess- ing seriously deficient professional performance.4This would still be based in case law, allowing interpretation within the light of current circumstances, but it would provide clearer articulation of the types of cases to be considered.The GMC should be praised for proving its commitment to openness, both in commissioning and publishing this report.But it cannot afford to sit on its laurels.The report does not find it guilty of racial bias, but neither does it find it not guilty-it cannot because of the parlous state of the organisation's records.Public bodies have a clear responsibility to maintain records that will allow their processes to be independently monitored.Otherwise how can an organisation be held accountable to its members or to the public?As the authors of the report make clear, inadequate records and obscure decision making processes will leave the GMC open to accusations ofbias until such accusations can be positively disproved.