Saturday, March 30, 2013

GMC guidance....

According to this recent publication by the General Medical Council, I'm not supposed to mention on my blog that I'm a doctor because I am anonymous on here:
If you identify yourself as a doctor in publicly accessible social media, you should also identify yourself by name. Any material written by authors who represent themselves as doctors is likely to be taken on trust and may reasonably be taken to represent the views of the profession more widely.
 Any thoughts?

AFZ

2 comments:

John said...

I'd assume it only refers to cases where you're dishing out medical advice....

alienfromzog said...

That's an interesting question John. The truth is I'm not sure because the GMC's definition of 'medical advice' is very wide.

I chose a long time ago on Ship of Fools and my blog to be relatively anonymous. I think that's both sensible for me but moreover right for my patients. Given that I write about politics, faith and life in general.

In other places as alienfromzog I have written about vaccines and NICE and a few other medical topics. This would probably be considered as writing in a professional context by the GMC.

I link to my blog from my website but not the other way round.

However, I write with the assumption that I could be linked to my words and I stand by every single word written here as AFZ and on the Ship and anywhere else.

I don't know whether this is a big deal or not. I really don't

AFZ