‘Medicine's dark side’: Failing to act on concerns shields doctors who kill

iStock.com/ sudok1

By Baroness Clare Gerada

Doctors who kill patients have repeatedly gone undetected by the profession and employers. GP Baroness Clare Gerada calls for an end to the culture of deference.

In 2000, while I was advising the then Department of Health on controlled drugs, I was given the prescribing records of former GP Harold Shipman.

The public inquiry later concluded that he had killed more than 200 patients over nearly three decades. But what struck me then was how little it would have taken to stop the doctor who became one of the most prolific serial killers.

A pharmacist could have checked the dose against the diagnosis. A GP partner could have noticed that one doctor was present at deaths far more often than his neighbours. An undertaker could have trusted his own unease. Each of them had a piece of the picture, yet the culture around them discouraged asking.

Hospitals quietly moved Swango on rather than confronting him, a practice American doctors call 'passing the trash'.