Doctors told to shed 'siege mentality'

DOCTORS had adopted a "siege mentality" following recent medical controversies and needed to move away from that mind-set, the head of the Health Service Executive, Professor Brendan Drumm insisted yesterday.

Addressing a medical conference on competence assurance, Prof Drumm said he believed the medical profession was now willing to challenge the "batten-down-the-hatches" approach.

"I believe we get tainted as a profession, very negatively, often on the basis of individual occurrences and huge numbers of people then get drawn into the whole siege-type performance because of that.