GPs face GMC duty on ‘back to work’ drive

Additional duties for doctors--and to fly! and create more than 168 hours in a week!
I hold the DOccMed I've seen the evidence and no doubt it is in the interest of the patient to discuss work but as it stands the GMC can have my (insert anatomical part) on a plate weekly for not following their 'Good Medical Practice' to the letter everytime.
I'd love to see the revised edition as 'Good Medical Practice accepting that you have less than 10 minutes per patient and a practice to run and a life.'

If anyone has a duty to get people back to work I'd have thought it would be the government, can we get them struck off if they fail?

I think we will look back in the future and consider that this was a sinister development. This moves from us being patient-centred to being government apparatchiks doing what the Great Ford dictates. I can just see us putting a Read Code on our telescreens 67N0 - employment counselling - to cover our backs.
Of course it is beneficial to our patients to be gainfully employed but as Rob Barnett rightly says, this is not always an option. To have it made our duty to get people back to work at the peril of our livelihoods (ie a GMC "guideline") is far too much and too heavy handed.
Let us stick to caring continuously for our patients and acting in their best interest and as their advocates.
Let us try to get rid of this clearly government-sponsored guideline inflicted by what used to be a professional body to which i have no choice but to subscribe and to pay for them getting involved with all this nonsense.

The more crackpot the GMC gets the more I feel there needs to be a regulatory authority that we can report GMC to to investigate their behaviour? But I did think they were starting to get better after they removed me from their online listing as they investigated a vexacious complaint about me in which a patient's mother to offence at my remarks on a DWP DBD370(N) GPFR form that the young lad "hadn't bothered" to go attend his hospital outpatients. 9 months later my name was returned to online register and GMC's GP adviser chastised me for poor use of English language and suggested in future I might be more careful of my use of English and been better to have used the term "failed to attend" to avoid causing my patients distress. I obviously accepted my "telling off" but thought this was such a waste of everybody's time - complaint had been through our internal complaints proceedure and I'd apologised. Mother unhappy so went to Health Authority who chucked it out, mum then complained to Healthcare Commission and Ombudsman who felt complaint had no foundation hence mum complained to GMC. And now we are going to be in trouble for issuing sick notes to chaps who say they've got bad backs and can't go to work this week - or ever. This is bonkers. Are the GMC OK these days, couldn't somebody have a quiet word and make sure they aren't become a bit wacky? May be just GMC is going through rough patch at home - be a shame if nobody helped them and they all ended up being unable to work?

about time, GP's in the UK are far too eager to pander to lazy patient's sicknote demands, my GP trainer in England would maintain it is not "our problem" if the patient is seeking a sicknote, which should just be provided. then UK GP's cry about the pathetic economy and losing pensions.

I have done this in my first year of GP life , ended up withany complaints to pct , as usual patient put complaint not to say i asked them to go back to work but about my behaviour. And we all know when it comes to doctor vs patient, patient is always right, last thing instead of any encouragent i was warned by my pct.

With ref to that Channel 4 programme on 'bad doctors'- that was about 3 GP's out of 40,000. How unbalanced reporting is that!!!
I am the patients advocate, not the governments, and my responsibility is to my patient not DWP! The GMC need to think very carefully about introducing this concept into GMP as this way beyond their remit!

You can advise patiets that working is good for their general well being till you are blue in the face but that will not get people to go back to /find work. But if they do not it is a problem for the govt to sort out. GPs are not employment agencies. There needs to be a cultural shift so that working and taking care of self and family is the norm for everyone GPs simply cannot be expected to bring that about.