Catherine Crawford

Medical Discipline: The Professional Conduct Jurisdiction of the General Medical Council, 1858-1990

Russell G Smith Clarendon Press, pounds sterling50, pp 397 ISBN 0 19 825795 3 At its creation in 1858 the General Medical Council was charged with maintaining a register of named practitioners whom the public could trust. The councils obligation to remove the unworthy from this list has evolved into a complex quasi-judicial system of medical regulation. Russell Smith, a lawyer, has investigated the practice of this system with unprecedented thoroughness. As well as analysing the more than 2000 cases heard up to 1990, Smith sat in on all the GMCs relevant public proceedings for more than a year during the late 1980s. The result is an illuminating study of how the disciplinary system has operated; where it works well; and where, why, and how it could be improved. Smith identifies …