The British General Medical Council and Medical Ethics

Abstract

In this paper I propose to discuss the relationship between the General Medical Council (Gmc) and medical ethics in the United Kingdom in the following way. First, I will describe briefly for those who are unfamiliar with the Gmc what that body is, what its powers and functions in relation to medical ethics are and something about how it carries them out. Here I will include a note about the circumstances of my research on the Gmc. Second, I will describe some of the changes that have taken place in the ethics guidance which the Council has given to registered medical practitioners in the uk over the past decade. I will then attempt to show the sources of these changes, specifically whether they have derived from inside or outside the profession. In the final section, I will suggest that the Council in providing guidance has moved closer to the concerns of the general public, but that it is still concerned to a large extent with intra-professional regulation. I will also suggest that this guidance seems nonetheless removed from many of the day to day ethical concerns of both practitioners and patients and that this is connected with variations in ways of knowing and understanding ethical problems as well as with differences of structural position.