The Health Committee

I attend the Health Committee at the General Dental Council in London, accompanied for moral support by a friend and a relative. The Hearing starts at 1.30pm. I deny the allegation of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, a different charge to that of which I was notified months previously.

By this point I am getting heartily sick of the bundle of patient complaints, staff complaints, medical reports, performance reports and PCT documentation being passed 'willy nilly' around Great Britain and used to 'beat me over the head' time and again in multiple different settings, even though most of it is stamped 'private and confidential'. The bundle is somewhere around 200 sides of A4 and, in relation to the complaints-which form the main body of the case and make me look like a total arsehole-the PCT have definitively stated that the evidence has, in the largest part, been generated as the product of a co-ordinated plot. Writing these words, I again find it difficult to believe that two staff members and twenty or so 'patients' have succeeded in derailing my life in this way.

True to form, the GDC's solicitor begins by reading out the most egregious examples of my alleged conduct, which allegations are two years old and presented at third or fourth hand. I object on the grounds that some of them never occurred. The psychiatrists are examined by the GDC and I cross-examine them. I am given time to say what I need to and I present the PCT's findings as independent corroboration of my position-the first and last chance I will get to do this. The GDC solicitor is asked why she was asked to bring the case but she does not know (she left this job with a good reference soon afterwards). The Committee's Legal Adviser states that 'this case should not have been brought' (the GDC excised this statement from their transcript of the proceedings). Because I am representing myself, the hearing overruns until 7.30. I am 'cleared' of a very rare personality disorder, the very existence of which is not universally accepted by psychiatry, and the case is referred to the Professional Conduct Committee. What a fucking shambles.

I have since been advised that this process may have been a ham fisted attempt to allow me back into the profession discreetly. It certainly did not look this way to me at the time.

I would guess that the Hearing cost the dental profession at least £10,000 all in.