Telly Doctors Are a Disgrace
Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc FRSA
There are now so many medical programmes on the television that there is a good chance that if you visit a GP or hospital clinic you will find your consultation being filmed.
This is a disgraceful abuse of the doctor patient relationship.
When I made TV programmes in the 1980s and 1990s, I steadfastly refused to have my patients filmed.
I refused even to ask them if they would agree to be filmed.
The doctor-patient relationship is the basis of medical practice.
The General Medical Council has done all it can to destroy the relationship (by removing confidentiality from the relationship) but doctors who are so desperate to be on TV that they will allow their patients to be filmed should be struck off the register and doomed to work in the Siberian salt mines.
Doctors say `Well, we always ask our patients for permission’.
But that is disingenuous.
How many patients are going to be brave enough to say NO when their doctor asks if they mind being filmed?
If your doctor wants you to agree to be filmed for a TV programme then I strongly suggest that you hand him or her a tube of lubricating jelly and tell them where to put their bloody camera.
Copyright Vernon Coleman 2018
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