Knowing yourself and relating to others for MRCGP AKT

A GP registrar tells you she has been feeling exhausted, dreads surgeries, and has started to feel detached from her patients. She has made two prescribing near-misses in a fortnight. She asks you not to tell anyone. What is the most appropriate response?

1. Report her immediately to the GMC Disproportionate. Referral to the regulator is for serious concerns about fitness to practise that local processes cannot manage. This is a supervisor and occupational health matter first.
2. Encourage her to speak to her educational supervisor and to access the practitioner health service, and explain that you cannot promise unconditional confidentiality where patient safety is involved correct Correct. She needs support and a route to it, and honesty about the limits of confidentiality is what makes the offer trustworthy. Promising secrecy you cannot keep destroys the relationship at exactly the moment she needs it.
3. Agree to keep it confidential and offer to check in with her weekly Wrong. The near-misses raise a patient safety issue, and an unconditional promise you may have to break is worse than an honest boundary.
4. Suggest she takes annual leave and says nothing to anyone Insufficient. Leave may help, but concealing the situation leaves the underlying problem and the safety issue unaddressed.
5. Tell her that everyone feels like this and that it will pass Wrong. Normalising burnout dismisses her, and there are two prescribing errors on the table.

The point: Doctor health is examinable and is tested through the same lens as any other safety concern: support the colleague, be honest about confidentiality limits, escalate proportionately, and use the practitioner health services that exist for this.

Source: GMC — Good medical practice: raising and acting on concerns General Medical Council · tier 0, exam blueprint / regulator