Spent the day, exhausted, dozing on the settee and trying to make sense of the GMC tribunal*. The full determination can be read here. Having waited since August 7 when the tribunal began (and the dread leading up to that date) and limping over the past two weekends of part hearing, hearing that the panel found that Valerie Murphy’s fitness to practice was impaired was both a relief and beyond distressing. I’ve no coherent thoughts, just a set of (overlapping) questions and reflections. Hopefully the process of writing will help.

1. Is Murphy’s ‘medical practice’ common?
The damning determination (worth reading in full to get some idea of the medical ‘care’ learning disabled people can expect to receive) misses some points that made my stomach curdle during the August hearing. Is specialist learning disability health provision so impoverished that it’s OK to prescribe medication before meeting patients? What does this mean and suggest about the treatment of certain patients?

Can it ever be acceptable, knowing you’re going on a two week holiday at the weekend, to not see an 18 year old young man you’ve agreed to be admitted on the previous Tuesday evening? A young man brutally restrained and sectioned that first night [Howl].

Is it common for medical consultants to tout a travelling suitcase with patient records for a colleague to rummage through?

Have these points dropped off the determination because there are bigger issues to pursue or because they aren’t seen as unusual?

2. Was Partridge’s ‘defence’ appropriate? 
A pre-meeting with the GMC earlier this year to go through my evidence left me reeling. It wasn’t a patch on the cross-examination I was subjected to in August by Murphy’s barrister, Richard Partridge. The pre-meeting preparation suggests that the cross-examination I endured wasn’t unusual.

Partridge repeated similar lines to his colleague, Alan Jenkins, who represented Murphy at LB’s inquest. Both focused on my ‘failings’ and the ‘Dr Crapshite’ post. On what they both seemed to view as unacceptable, unreasonable and discrediting action by a feckless mother. Ignoring what that post (and so many others) revealed about the lack of available support. This focus says so much more about them. And/or their client.

3. Ted why? 
Twitter discussion has focused on Murphy still practicing in Cork. Earlier, a minor bombshell from Stuart who lives in/near Cork. Murphy’s appointment (which is still unclear) was heralded as a ‘turning point’ in CAMHS service provision. An expert from Britain, leaving her investigation cloud behind her.

Prof Ted Dinan, the Gut Man, was prepared to offer a character witness to a colleague he seemingly barely knew. What were you thinking Ted? Boldly pegging Murphy in the top 10% of Irish psychiatrists [shudder]. He told the travelling suitcase story without faltering. While twitter groaned and buckled with disbelief, a few sharp questions reduced his story to a handful of contact hours – “in an academic year she gave two lectures and approximately 14 hours of tutorials” – and help with 5 patients across two years.

He stated that he regarded Dr Murphy as “extremely competent” and marked her apart from other consultants he had worked with, particularly in respect of her willingness to come in and give her assistance.

In contrast to her apparent unwillingness to see LB for 19 days.

4. What price power and insight?
Power. On April 24 2014 Murphy received a letter from the Sloven Chief Medical Officer stating ‘it was not considered that any further action is required in this matter‘. A clean bill of medical health from the Sloven exec. The various CQC inspections, Verita report, inquest and Mazars review processes led to no further scrutiny of her medical practice. We made the GMC referral (with Charlotte Haworth Hird) in May 2014.

Without this referral Murphy would, I assume, be continuing her practice of ‘implicit risk assessments’ (in her head) and remote prescribing in Oxfordshire, Cork or somewhere else. How can this possibly be?

Insight. Reflexivity or reflectivity is a central task for sociologists. Constantly reflecting on stuff; who we are in terms of our identity and experiences, our assumptions, what we bring to our research, how we interact with research participants and the data generated, and our analysis. I’ve always thought of it as a sound task for life. Like I’ve long thought that ‘easy read’ texts should be the stuff of everyday life, not an added extra when funds or thought permit. Adjustments that make life better for everyone.

Murphy failed on insight. She failed over and over again. Her barrister arguably added to this with his own apparent lack of insight. 

We’ve been brutalised by this process. At the mercy of timescales decided by others, cross-examination, forced to revisit what happened, rehashing blame lines… our lives on hold. John Lish captured the experience of the tribunal perfectly in a tweet.

There must be a better way.

*Am now off ‘sick’ for the week. Wary of the extreme spaces we now inhabit and what these mean. It’s only two weeks until the @HSE hearing to set the date for the HSE hearing…