Dr Ikwueke had an ‘unblemished record’ with testimonials to the fact that he was hardworking & conscientious, often going beyond the call of duty. But the panel chairman, Judith Worthington, told him that he had limited insight into his failings, & took false reassurance from the fact that the child had an appointment for his development to be assessed by a paediatric consultant.
In fact Dr Ikwueke had been the first to realise, in December 2006, that the baby might be being abused. But it was not enough for him just to ‘light the fuse’ under the system by referring him to a specialist: ”You as a GP were at the centre of a network &, by virtue of your role, in a position to share information.” He was found guilty of a series of failings, culminating in grave error, & has been found unfit to practice unsupervised for 12 months.
The same issue of the British Medical Journal which reports those findings also carries an article about the problems facing doctors acting as witnesses in child protection cases, which opens with a statement from the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health on his reason for turning down such work: “My feeling was ‘why take the risk of losing my livelihood?'"
It is not the doctors who murder children. Putting their livelihoods at risk cannot be the best way of ensuring that children are protected from those who would do them harm.
Being a GP used, at least, to mean being a family doctor, with responsibilities to all the members of the family. If doctors took drastic action every time ‘possible abuse’ crossed their mind, they would be failing in their duty of care for the needs of the adults or other children in the family, & mothers, especially vulnerable ones, might become reluctant to take their child to the doctor for any reason at all.
We should not let those deliberately manipulative people who are prepared to do things to children that the rest of us can barely bring ourselves to even try to imagine spread their poison through the whole system, tainting all of us.
At least three professionals have already been punished for this episode.
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