Equality and Human Rights Commission

This section explains how medical professionals maintain good standards. There are comments on the following sections of the GMC's guidance:

• Point 12
• Point 14
• Point 14.g.

12. You must keep your knowledge and skills up to date throughout your working life. You should be familiar with relevant guidelines and developments that affect your work. You should regularly take part in educational activities that maintain and further develop your competence and performance.

This would also include medical staff keeping up to date with knowledge and legislation which is indirectly linked to medical work. For example, learning about the social as well as the medical issues surrounding conditions. A further practical example is attending disability equality and etiquette training. A high proportion of your patients are covered by the DDA. Involving disabled people in providing this training is very beneficial.

You may be a highly trained GP or consultant, with many years experience of the medical aspects of long term conditions, but, you may not have any detailed knowledge of disability equality issues. Many doctors could benefit from CPD or dedicated training in this area, to enable them to become more competent in disability equality. One example of the result is that you will be able to give newly diagnosed patients with cancer, MS, sight loss or many more conditions some critical social or economic advice and also direct them to the relevant place for expert advice and support they need. You can also follow up whether patient’s have used such signposting during later appointments.

14. You must work with colleagues, patients and the public to maintain and improve the quality of your work and promote patient safety.

An example is to regularly use the Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) in England, the Board of the Community Health Councils and Learning Disability Wales in Wales and the Boards Advocacy development plans in Scotland, to see how you are doing. This could involve looking at customer survey satisfaction forms to see if there are any gaps in the quality of service you are providing.

If this feedback is also specifically sought from diverse patient groups, it can illustrate what you may need to do to improve performance amongst black or ethnic minorities, amongst women/men, or, for disabled people etc.

It is also likely that the local PALS will help you to establish contacts with groups of disabled people, including those that are specialists in particular impairments. In Wales it would be Disability Wales or Learning Disability Wales.

If your service already asks if people have access requirements, notes and uses these, you will have started to improve your service quality.

14.g. Contribute to confidential inquiries and adverse event recognition and reporting, to help reduce risk to patients.

An important way to ensure safety for any patient is to clear away clutter and dangerously stored obstacles. Doctors are not always the responsible person but they can usually do much to get things put right.

In addition, patient safety is improved when people clearly understand what will happen during a course of treatment, and the risks that this involves.

For example, when a patient is about to receive treatment have steps been taken to explain this properly? If someone is deaf or visually impaired can they follow the explanation? Similarly, if they have a learning disability or experience anxiety due to a mental health problem, has it been checked out that they can understand and recall the explanation? This may need to be done by breaking information down into small chunks and checking understanding at various times throughout the explanation, or by making sure they have a trusted friend or supporter with them who can help explain what is happening.

It is also important to ensure both safety and dignity when physically treating or assisting disabled people. For example, manual lifting and handling policies should not cause unreasonable restrictions for disabled people. If a disabled person cannot move themselves without help, staff should seek to provide this. For example it may be necessary for the staff to seek assistance and or to ensure that lifting equipment such as hoists are available and that they are trained in how to use them to maximise mobility whilst minimising risk to the patient.