The GDC responds to FOI requests for stats on suicides during fitness to practise investigations

  Posted by: Dental Design      10th November 2022

Earlier this year, after a reading a report published by the General Medical Council in March 2022 revealing that five doctors had died due to suicide between 1st January 2018 and 31^st December 2020, consultant orthodontist Dr Farooq Ahmed put in a Freedom of Information request to the General Dental Council (GDC), inquiring as to the number of registrants that had taken their lives during a Fitness to Practise investigation. The GDC declined the request, stating that there is no requirement for the regulator to be informed when a registrant may take their own life, and that carrying out a manual search of records wouldn’t provide a ‘complete picture’, adding that the reasonable time limit for the GDC to carry out record searches is 18 hours.

Dr Ahmed pressed further after the regulator’s refusal to comply with the FOI request, and was told that when a search was carried out on the GDC’s internal database for the term ‘suicide’, it produced 6,753 results.

Fast-forward to 9^th November 2022, and the GDC has responded in the form of a blogpost on its website, titled ‘Reporting the cause of death of registrants who have died while under fitness to practise investigation’. Stefan Czerniawski, Executive Director for Strategy at the GDC, explains within the post that the regulator has not routinely collected the cause of death after a registrant’s passing.

“A concern has been voiced that some registrants under investigation may take their own lives, and earlier this year we received a freedom of information (FOI) request seeking the number of dentists to have done so. We do not hold this information, because our primary concern is knowing if a registrant has died, so that we can take necessary practical actions, such as closing their entry in the register. If a fitness to practise case is open, it also enables us to close the case and record that we have done so.

“At that point, the cause of death has not always been established. Where the person has died unexpectedly or other than as a result of natural causes, the coroner (or in Scotland, the procurator fiscal) must be notified and an inquest may be held. That is always the case for a suspected suicide and only after the completion of the inquest can a final death certificate be issued which records the cause of death. That is likely to come some considerable time after the death has occurred and, crucially for our regulatory purposes, after we have removed the person from the register and closed any open fitness to practise cases. As a result, we do not collect and record causes of death where an inquest has been required.”

Czerniawski goes on to say that: “Because there has been concern about the matter, we think it is appropriate to develop an accurate picture of the prevalence of suicide while a fitness to practise case is active.”

He notes that a research project will be undertaken at the GDC, collecting data for the period 2019 – 2021, with a report to be published during the first half of 2023. “We will aggregate data over three years to minimise the risk of identifying individuals, and we will allow a twelve-month period for inquests to be completed and final death certificates to become available,” Czerniawski explains. “In developing our approach, we have drawn on the work the General Medical Council has undertaken to gather and publish similar data for medical registrants. We aim to publish data in a similar format to that used by the GMC and, like them, if the total number of cases is below three, we will indicate that, but not disclose the specific count – again that is to protect the anonymity of individuals.”

The GDC will not be providing any commentary on the results. Czerniawski cites guidance from the Samaritans, which states that “Speculation about the ‘trigger’ or cause of a suicide can oversimplify the issue and should be avoided. Suicide is extremely complex and most of the time there is no single event or factor that leads someone to take their own life.”

While the regulator is finalising the detailed methodology that it will use and is going to check that the retrospective collection of data can be effective in practice, Czerniawski adds: “If we encounter something which prevents us from proceeding as we have planned, we will explain what has happened and how we plan to address any obstacle. When the report has been published, we will go on to assess what the most useful longer-term approach might be, and we will share the outcome of this work once it is concluded.”

The post ends with a message to reach out if you are struggling:

“If any of the issues we have discussed above are affecting you, we encourage you to reach out to Samaritans. Their helpline is available day and night, 356 days a year. You can call them for free on 116 123, email them at jo@samaritans.org, or visit www.samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.”