GMC says it’s making progress in stamping out discrimination in referrals

Jun 17, 2023

The gap between doctors from ethnic minority groups and white doctors in the proportion of referrals to the General Medical Council for fitness to practise issues has been narrowing, the regulator has said. The gap in educational attainment between the two groups has also decreased, it said.

In 2021 the GMC set itself targets to eliminate by 2026 the disproportionality in numbers of fitness to practise complaints it received from employers.1 At that time ethnic minority doctors were twice as likely as white doctors to be referred by their employer to the GMC.

The regulator also set itself the goal of ending disadvantage, discrimination, and unfairness in medical education and training by 2031.

Speaking to The BMJ, the GMC's chief executive, Charlie Massey, said that although the targets were ambitious they were also necessary. "We’re not doing this because we want to polish our own halo. We are doing this because we need to be part of a much wider system that is committed to creating environments that are supportive and inclusive," he said.

The GMC's latest progress report shows that the proportion of doctors referred to the GMC in the five years to 2022 was 0.41% of doctors from ethnic minority backgrounds and 0.22% of white doctors, a gap of 0.19 percentage points.2 In the period 2017 to 2021 the gap was 0.24 percentage points, with referral rates of 0.5% and 0.26%, respectively.

Between the two periods there was also change in the proportion of employers with evidence of disproportionality in their referrals to the GMC, based on a doctor's ethnicity …

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