Patient group urges language guidance for GPs

DOCTORS should undertake communication refresher courses and be able to access industry standard guidebooks to appropriate language when dealing with the ill, a patients’ group said yesterday.

Patient Focus made its comments following the first public hearing before the Irish Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Committee on Wednesday, at which a GP was cleared of professional misconduct for using terms such as “willy-bits” and “rumpy pumpy” when dealing with a woman patient.

The committee found the phraseology used by Dr Ross Ardill of the Custom House Medical Centre in central Dublin was “insensitive and inappropriate”, but ruled that he was not guilty of professional misconduct.

Yesterday Mr Ardill told Today FM the case had been “demoralising” and had affected his family. He told the Ray D’Arcy show: “It is very demoralising and certainly affects your professional confidence.”

He said he had received messages of support and that it had never been his intention to cause offence.

As for the effect the case has had on his wife and two children, he said: “She has been very traumatised, she has been quite unwell actually. It has put quite a strain on her and our children.”

Patient Focus said it did not wish to comment on specific cases, but spokeswoman Sheila O’Connor said the organisation regularly received complaints from women regarding the language used in consultations with GPs and said it was time to re-educate some doctors about what language was unacceptable. “We get frequent complaints from women about that [type of] language and that kind of relationship in a consultation. I do not feel it would be any harm if [doctors] were sent for training.”

She said the case showed many doctors might use terminology and language that they feel is appropriate, but which causes offence to women patients.

“We are all improved by exposure to different perspectives,” she said. “It is no harm that doctors are made aware that a lot of women feel this [language] is inappropriate.”

Dr Ross Boland of the Medical Council said any doctor who had had vocational training would have had significant instruction in communication skills.

Dr Ardill apologised to the patient as soon as she wrote to him about the language used in the consultation on September 25, 2007, and again apologised at Wednesday’s hearing.

He said he had used the term “man’s willy-bits” when trying to check on the woman’s recent sexual history so as to help him form a diagnosis as to her viral symptoms. Later in the consultation, when advising her on ways to improve her sleep patterns, his guidance included “rumpy pumpy”, a phrase the woman said she found offensive.