GMC Continues to Target Black Doctors for Investigation. Dr Valentine Udoye's story will leave you shocked and stunned.

My name is Dr Valentine Udoye, the background and the origination of my persecution by GMC

are as follows:

I am a full registered Medical Practitioner with the General Medical Council, with registration no (6094869) since 2007

I graduated from Nnamdi Azikiwe University -Nigeria in 1999, where I was awarded MBBS. I registered with the Nigerian Medical Council (FM 27,449) in 1999. I started my medical practice with Nnamdi Azikiwe where I worked as a House Officer from 1999- Jan 2001, after which I moved to practice as a General Practitioner in Nigeria.

I worked as a GP in various hospitals in Nigeria before coming to UK in 2005.

The reason for this move was due to a horrific bandit attack on one of my trips on the motorway, where I witnessed murder, rape and beatings by bandits up to 30 in number. After coming out unhurt, this led to the decision to leave Nigeria for a better life for my family in the UK.

From 2005-2010, I did clinical attachments and worked as a trust grade doctor - FY1 and FY2 levels in various hospitals in the UK.

Due to my experience in general practice in Nigeria, I wanted to continue my medical practice here in the UK as a General Practitioner. On enquiry, I did understand that I could practice as a GP in the UK via two routes:

1. (a)  By obtaining a certificate of completion of training in General Practice (CCT) or

2. (b)  By obtaining a certificate of eligibility for GP registration as an international GP

Having weighed my options in terms of length of time and cost, I decided to pursue a CCT route. I applied for GP training, and I was accepted to do the training in Scotland. During my GP training, I had to apply for a visa every time I changed hospitals, which I couldn't afford as a father of a young family.

Therefore, I changed to a Tier 1 visa to avoid frequent visa applications. 

Unfortunately, I realised I couldn't work as a trainee under this Tier 1 category.

Thus, I decided to stop GP training.

In light of this dilemma, I decided to develop my GP skills by working in various departments as a non-trainee from 2011 to 2014. Having a wide experience in different fields of medicine, I decided to renew my desire to go for registration as a GP with GMC. 

Because of my experience in 2011, I decided to take the CEGPR route ( Certificate of Eligibility for GP registration). The information on the RCGP website stated that exams for membership could alternatively be taken abroad in countries such as Dubai.

I contacted the Royal College of General Practitioners Office in Dubai, and I was informed of the requirements I had to meet in order to sit the MRCG exam, as well as the exam curriculum. I noted that the exam curriculum in the UK is the same curriculum obtainable in Dubai.

I prepared for the exams from late 2014 to 2015, and I flew to Dubai on three occasions to take some of the preparatory courses in accordance with the Curriculum. Having finished the courses in Dubai, I took the MRCGP exams. I passed all the courses, including AKT & CSA. I was thereafter awarded MRCGP(INT).

This indicates that notwithstanding my qualification as a GP in Nigeria, I am now a certified General medical practitioner accredited by the Royal College of General Practitioners in the UK and worldwide. This certificate satisfies the criteria for registration as a GP with GMC. I, therefore, made an application to the GMC in 2016 for a certificate of Eligibility for GP registration.

However, The GMC, in consideration of my application, refused my registration on the grounds that I needed more training and experience in certain areas of general practice, which the GMC recommended could be fulfilled through general practice training in the UK; or through General Practice work experience in the UK or gain the necessary competencies in the posts other than GP training.

Determined to practice as a GP, I found that the GMC, in their refusal decision, stated that the responsibility to undertake any further training to meet up with their recommendations rests in me. I enquired from the NHS Health Education as to what I should do next to be able to practice as a GP.

I was advised to contact the Head of Continuing Practice, Postgraduate School of Primary Care Health Education England North East, in the name of Dr Iain Lawther. 

In April 2016, I contacted him with an enquiry about the best way for me to proceed to GP Practice in the UK. My email enquiry which clearly set out my dilemmatic situation was provided to GMC. Dr Lawther (whom the NHS Officers I contacted for advice directed me to) responded to my enquiry and clearly and rightly acknowledged that I, as an international GP, was entitled to take the route of Induction via the NHS Induction and Refreshers Scheme programme (I & R Scheme) his organisation, Health Education England runs.

Dr Lawther made it clear to me that the I& R scheme is for those GPs who were trained and qualified abroad and who would want to enter the UK to practice as GP. He directed that there were, however, some exams and processes to undertake, which included interviews, pre-assessment exams, and clinical placements.

When it became clear that I was entitled to undertake further training under the I&R scheme, all the officers of the NHS continuing education and speciality programme was involved in making it possible for me to undertake this training, and I was so grateful to all of them particularly Dr Lawther, Ellaine Griffiths and Dr Tranter.

I was asked to undertake the first pre-assessment exam in stimulatory Surgery, which I did and had a successful outcome. I was told to proceed to clinical placement in Surgery as part of the scheme. I was eventually sent for I & R placement at Mansion House Surgery under the supervision of Dr Richard Tranter, who is a GP training Programme Director in the North East, for the remaining part of the training scheme.

I worked hard to write all the assessments and works assigned to me by my clinical supervisor -Dr Tranter, and at the end of the 6 months of training, I passed all the courses, and I succeeded. I was given the structure report necessary for my registration as a GP with the GMC.  As soon as my structural report was sent to Health Education England North East, a request for full Performances List inclusion was requested. 

Then, an allegation from nowhere was fabricated that I was working as a full GP while I was undertaking the training placement as part of the I & R scheme at Mansion House Surgery. I could not believe what was happening, and before I knew it, this was escalated to GMC, who initiated an investigation and immediately moved to the Interim Tribunal of MPTS to get interim restriction orders against me on the basis of protecting public interests and patient safety.

My practice was restricted for 15 months; however, my lawyers made an application for review in December 2018 to IOT of the MPTS, which revoked the restrictions order on the basis that even if I had practised as a GP as alleged for the 6 months training placement, there was no risks report or any concerns raised during the training period and more importantly, I have finished the training. Therefore, there was no need for any restriction since I moved back to my employer to continue my work as a locum specialist Doctor.

I thought that by the MPTS IOT decision, GMC would agree with the IoT reasoning and its order of revocation and leave me alone. Unfortunately, my lawyer received a letter from GMC in January 2019 that they would be proceeding to drag me to Medical Practitioners Tribunal services (MPTS) for Fitness to practice to investigate me on totally new allegations. 

The allegations were that whilst I was undertaking the training placement at the Mansion surgery, I was paid the I & R scheme bursary, which the GMC argued I was not entitled to receive on the basis that I was not entitled to undertake the I & R scheme programme. 

They alleged that by my receiving the bursary, I have been dishonest.

The GMC further alleged that during the filling of my application for the I & R scheme form in 2016, I had ticked yes to the question “are you on the GP GMC register” which was a one-off mistake among all other similar questions I had ticked correctly. 

That by me ticking yes, I have been dishonest. These allegations were subjected to MPTS proceedings from January 2019 until January 2020, when the MPTS dismissed all the allegations without finding even misconduct on my part. I thought I was resurrected from death, and it was the end of my trial part of life, but alas.

Despite the fact that the MPTS proceedings lasted for 2 years before I was finally acquitted of all GMC charges on January 2020, and despite the huge financial burden I personally faced throughout the duration of the GMC proceeding, the GMC appealed the MPTS to the High Court.

All my sickness resurfaced, and I was struggling all the while with emotional, psychological and financial hazards, including the impacts which led to the breakup of my marriage. 

That effect has not left me to date. 

Then, the High Court, rather than acknowledging that the MPTS had heard the 8 witnesses presented by GMC and all of them did not blame me, including the Lead and the Director of Health Education England North East who runs the I & R scheme, ignored all of these and set aside the MPTS determination and remitted it back to a different MPTS panel albeit not on grounds of public interest or patient safety reasons but only on the technicality that MPTS did not understand the GMC case.

The remittal hearing has been again listed for 13 days long hearing in October 2022, which in effect subjected me further to another huge financial hardship, psychological and emotional trauma.  I have been struggling to sleep for the past 4 years. My marriage has broken down, and my children have been confused about what has been happening to me. 

I really need help.

I am facing serious emotional, psychological and financial trauma because of the GMC’s unwarranted attacks against me. GMC’s attacks on me are without any justified reasons. I have never practised as a GP during the I & R training placement; rather, I was under the supervision of a GP trainer Dr Tranter who also confirmed that I was his candidate and an I & R GP trainee.

GMC’s unwarranted and aggravated atrocious attacks on me and other BAME doctors need to be brought to the attention of the public with a view to stopping their unnecessary attacks on medical doctors in the UK, particularly against BAME doctors. 

This has destroyed my family, what I have worked for, and me as a person. Additionally,  I am struggling now to live with a lot of debts accruing from legal costs in defence of GMC attacks and persecutions. 

Call to action. 

My hearing is due to take place in Manchester on 29th September at 10.00 am at Medical Practitioners Tribunal Hearing St James Building, 79 Offord Street, Manchester M1 6FQ.  

I ask that you share this article. Promote my campaign material, and finally, help me mobilise community attendance at my forthcoming hearing. 

Inner city youth violence: more casualties than Afghanistan

 

The last decade has seen inner city youth violence kill more black youth in the UK than British soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

The current scale of youth violence in UK black communities is rarely understood by white mainstream society. There is a strong view among black communities that if such levels of serious youth violence and murder were occurring in white middle class communities this issue would be a matter of national concern.

The implication is clear: that as long as black youth are killing each other then nobody really cares. I was interested to try to get some scale on the scope and impact of these murders on our communities. How best could this be illustrated was my challenge and so I did a little research and what I found was quite shocking.

The black community experience over the last decade of serious violence and murder is comparable to that of a country at war. The numbers are compelling.

Since 2001 up to the 4th July 2011, a total of 375 British forces personnel or MOD civilians have died while serving in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001. Of these, 331 were killed as a result of hostile action.

Over the same period 298 black men and 67 black women were stabbed to death. 228 black men and 14 black women were shot dead. That’s a total of 607 black people murdered over the last decade.

The reality is that there is what can be reasonable described as a ‘small war ' going on within our communities.  There is no real support from either local authorities or central government for black communities seeking to deal with the wider consequences of such high levels of death and serious violence.

There is no real strategy or understanding from central Government or the media about the crisis we face or how best to deal with it.

As a result our suffering is largely in silence, there is little empathy for our plight and no acceptance that the drivers of violent crime, unemployment, poor schools, bad housing, the fear of crime and the dysfunctional families that result, are in need urgent attention.

What is equally not understood is the profound scale of the social and psychological damage, the damage to community morale and feelings of safety, the rampant fear of violent crime, and the tragedy of young people who survived but are disabled or walking with colostomy bags and razor scars across their face.

This is the desperate reality of black deprived communities. Add to this the fact that the recorded figures whilst accurate on deaths, significantly under records the extent of violent youth crime. Many, many young people are treated for gang related violence in hospital accident and emergency units and refuse to report these crimes to the police.  These are the walking wounded and when combined with the official figures illustrate the sheer scale of violence that deprived black communities are forced to live with.

Young people are becoming increasingly desensitised to this intense level of violence, primary school children understand the vocabulary of violence and the need for protection that is a major dynamic in driving vulnerable young people into gangs.

Whilst pathways to employment and education opportunities have largely been closed down, inner city areas are awash with hard drugs and guns.

In Inuit folklore there is a tale of a wolf hunter who plants a sword in the ice. The hilt is buried in the snow with the blade pointing toward the sky. The hunter covers the blade in blood and waits as wolves smelling the blood begin to lick the blade and as they do so the cut their tongues and bleed to death. Who does one blame for the deaths of the wolves, the wolves or the hunter?

Black youth who live in the most deprived areas in families made dysfunctional by long-term generational unemployment and high rates of income poverty, being taught in failing schools and living with high levels of knife and gun crime can be compared to the Inuit wolves.

The drug and gun importers represent the hunter here. The flooding of our areas with arms and narcotics results in some of these vulnerable bored, unemployed young people being seduced into crime.

They are alienated, angry and unemployed and are easy pickings for criminals that are intent on controlling their local markets and in need of soldiers to provide protection from rival gangs.

One cannot however escape the simple fact that the black community must also accept primary responsibility for the number of single parent families and the dramatic effect of fatherless homes have on the attitude and behavior of black boys. 

Black men who are estranged or disengaged from their families must take responsibility for their offspring. Black women must themselves be open to constructive dialogue with the fathers of their sons. SACYRD will be discussing the possibility of holding a national black family’s reconciliation day next year; such is the urgency of this crisis.

The current disjuncture between the status of black men and black boys must be repaired and reinforced. Parental responsibility is key to beginning the process of turning the tide of violence engulfing our communities.

However, no community immersed in poor neighborhoods, suffering generational levels of unemployment and high rates of income poverty can sustain itself over the longer term without these issues being addressed. Whole families and communities have suffered long tem unemployment in largely workless households over the last four decades.

Our young people have boundless energy and are bursting with ideas and talent. That latent talent is then wasted through want of real opportunity. As a direct consequence of long-term poverty we have seen develop a culture of poverty, bringing with it poverty of imagination, of ideas, ambition and the necessary resources to fully commit to and sustain family life.

Long-term poverty and unemployment, poor schooling, poor rates of health and worse housing all combine into a multi headed hydra of social problems that undermines the human moral propensity to do the right thing and that vacuum is filled by a moral decrepitude. With dysfunctional parents and no real social support, the culture of MTV and Hollywood rap videos become the model for the surrogate family – gangs.

Whole families and large minorities within communities unable to cope with the strains of modern family life, disintegrate and fragment. 

Such areas as we live in become permanently associated with violent crime and deprivation. The places where we live are flooded (some would say that this is a conscious decision by the authorities) with drugs and guns. Add to this an under reporting of violence that would increase the recorded level of crime by around 50% and the real scale of the problem we face begins to emerge.

And in our weakened fragmented state we turn on each other. Even relatively stable families living on such communities find it difficult to repel the culture of despair and the glamorisation of youth violence.

Remember the Inuit tale of the hunter and the wolves?

Government has to fully address the woeful lack of constructive opportunities for employment and education black youth. The economic state of our communities is acting as a recruitment sergeant for violent criminality. The grave worry is that in the current context of the austerity budget and public spending, these social ills will become gravely exacerbated exacting a terrible social and human cost. 

How are we to prevent another failed generation of our communities? The answer lies in America and Northern Ireland and the adoption of Affirmative Action is the only policy response capable of responding adequately to the scale of the current crisis. Overnight, young black people would have thousands of employment opportunities, as did Catholic youth in Northern Ireland when this was introduced in 1991. Our youth unemployment situation is much worse that that of Catholic youth at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland. If it’s good enough for those who face religious discrimination why not those who suffer more as a result of race discrimination? This is the only Government policy capable of having a dramatic effect on all of these issues that would result in bringing to an end, in less than a decade, this cycle of long-term deprivation.

Short-term palliatives and incremental short lived project initiatives, however well intentioned, are not sufficient in scale to address these issues. We should reject these conscience saving gestures in favour of a much more radical approach: Affirmative Action, which is likely to finally break the on going cycle of deprivation characterised by racism, poverty and crime.

In addition to this Government should adopt a proactive public health anti violence policy approach to violence and give the confiscated assets of criminals back to the communities that suffer the detritus of their foul endeavors.

Of course parents and black men in particular must also address the issue of responsible fatherhood if we are to see the cessation of unacceptable levels of violence. But a call for a community to ‘do the right thing’ is meaningless in the context of run down deprived neighborhoods and discrimination in education and the labour market.

Yes there is a war going on in our communities and the loss is unimaginable for most other communities. It is a sad fact that the level of death, injury and other collateral damage is not empathetically understood.

The conclusions some have come to is that Black lives are simply not worth as much to the media and some sections of the Government as white lives.

On that score we are degraded as both British citizens, human beings and as people worthy of compassion.

We need to tackle statutory indifference, institutionalized racism and community complacency if we are to save our communities from a violent descent into the kind of mayhem and chaos we have seen in some US cities.

It’s time for action.

Lee Jasper