Friday, June 20, 2008

TV psychiatrist "unfit to practice"

a followup and conclusion to earlier reports. As reported by Reuters.

Psychiatrist and broadcaster Dr Raj Persaud has been found unfit to practice after he admitted plagiarising other people's work, the medical watchdog said on Friday.

His conduct was "inappropriate, misleading, dishonest and liable to bring the profession into disrepute", a General Medical Council panel found.

He had undermined public confidence in the profession and his conduct had "fallen below the standards of behaviour the public expected from doctors", it added.

Persaud had admitted copying four pieces of work for his 2003 book "From the Edge of the Couch" during a GMC disciplinary hearing in Manchester this week.

The former presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme "All in the Mind" also admitted copying passages from two other pieces of work in a series of newspaper articles and journals.

He was resident psychiatrist on the daytime TV show "This Morning" and has appeared on the "Richard & Judy" show. He has also written for The Daily Telegraph and The Independent.

Persaud had denied dishonesty, but the GMC said he must have known what he was doing. He had said he was in a confused mental state at the time of writing the work because of the pressure of juggling his work for the media and the National Health Service.

"Your dishonest conduct brings the profession into disrepute and the panel has... concluded that your fitness to practise is impaired by reason of your misconduct," the GMC said in a written judgement.

"The panel has determined that your dishonest conduct in plagiarising other people's work on multiple occasions represents a serious breach of the principles that are central to good medical practice.

"Your conduct has fallen below the standards of behaviour that the public is entitled to expect from doctors and undermines public confidence in the profession."

While the panel said no patients had been injured it still had an obligation to protect the profession's reputation.

"Doctors occupy a position of privilege and trust in society and are expected to act with integrity and to uphold proper standards of conduct," the panel said.

Persaud is a consultant psychiatrist at the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Hospitals and Gresham professor for Public Understanding of Psychiatry.

In 2002, he was voted one of the top 10 psychiatrists in the UK by a survey of the Institute of Psychiatry and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

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