We know a lot of people find the healthcare news feed helpful, so to make it even better we will now send out a weekly e-mail, at the weekend, containing that weeks most exciting, interesting and important healthcare news stories. If you want to get it, just stick your e-mail in below.

This is a guest post by Thilakshan Jeyakumar, a gap year student and medical applicant.

Revalidation is a new scheme introduced on 3rd of December 2012 by the General Medical Council (GMC) under which licensed doctors must be able to demonstrate they are up to date and fit to practise. Currently being in its initial phase, the Revalidation programme is mandatory for all 250,000 licensed doctors in the UK. In our late build up to Christmas, Professor Sir Peter Rubin, chair of the GMC, became the first doctor to revalidate successfully. The GMC hope to work down the hierarchy of healthcare, starting with chair members, medical leaders and responsible officers. The GMC expect to have most doctors revalidated by March of 2016 and all doctors to finalise revalidating by March 2018. Though this may sound quite a distance into the future, it should be understood that Revalidation is an added pressure to the already existing busy lifestyle of a doctor.

Interestingly enough, Revalidation is a scheme that the GMC have been planning for years since the Shipman Inquiry. As you may be aware, Harold Shipman was a British family doctor who is known to have killed around 250 of his patients over 23 years and was named as ‘Britain’s most prolific serial killer’. Whilst Shipman was proven guilty in early 2000, the GMC received a lot of media attention and were forced to change its structure into doing more to protect patients. Ever since the series of events, the GMC has been making regular checks on doctors, though Revalidation will now become the official routine of checks.

So what exactly does Revalidation mean for doctors, trainees, students and aspiring medics? Your license will now be at more of a risk if you are not complying with the Good Medical Practice; the principles and values that underpin the medical professionalism in action. As a doctor you will be required to be aware of recent medical advancements and techniques. For junior doctors in training and specialist training, your revalidation will be completed by your designated body, in most cases, your postgraduate deanery. “A gradual learning curve” is a phrase many medical applicants put forward in their application but later forget further in their career, yet it is of such crucial importance in regards to revalidation. For aspiring medics like myself, it will mean that we should be prepared to take on board everything taught at medical school, collect a range of experiences from training and be prepared to accept the future. In the final episodes of a doctor’s career, revalidation can become quite a nail-biting experience.

Aside from the negatives of this article, it should be noted that the effects of revalidation is only speculation as of the time of writing. In regards to the general public, patients will build more trust in their doctors knowing that they have been revalidated. The GMC state the revalidation is aimed to increase the quality of care whilst they also provide online access to the Good Medical Practice to any member of the public to know what to expect from a doctor. As you may be already aware, healthcare and the NHS is constantly under public scrutiny which includes many that opt for private care. Considering that the GMC is not a government bound institution, they are the national regulator for all doctors in the UK, including private doctors.  What happens if doctors fail revalidation? Is that the end of their medical career? Or merely an interruption in their time spent on the medical register? Though there are many questions yet to be answered, we have yet to see how revalidation will be rolled out, and 2013 will be a year that marks its initial introduction.

Over the last month I have seen two separate calls for a return to a “caring NHS”, one by the Chief Nursing Officer and one by  Prince Charles. I want to start out by saying that I absolutely respect the views of these individuals, but I think they should be making a different call. I think there needs to be a return to trusting the NHS, trusting the doctors and nurses and all the other health care professionals that deliver fantastic high quality care on a daily basis to millions of people.

When I say return to trusting the NHS, I also include institutional trust from government and trust from the media. It is very rare to see an article in the news praising our National Health Service, and it is very rare to hear a politician express praise for our National Health Service with post-fixing it with a statement about how it needs top-down re-organisation. It seems to me that if we all spent a little more time trusting the NHS, and a little less time telling the people who spend their days taking care of us how they could do it better then we might actually start getting somewhere.

The continual bashing of the NHS in the media and by politicians only leads to one thing – public mistrust. That public mistrust is dangerous not only for public health, but it leads to politicians trying to take advantage of this mistrust by playing with the NHS – such as in the on-going health reforms by the Cameron-led coalition government. I wonder whether it wouldn’t be a good idea to call for a more caring and compassionate government, before we start picking on the NHS? Or maybe the Department of Health should send out internet feedback forms to the public on government performance, before suggesting GPs should do so.

I’m only in my 13th week of studying medicine, and its already apparent how easily conflicts with the public arrise. Take antibiotics as a prime example, most members of the public would believe it is their divine right to receive antibiotics, even in cases where it might serve no purpose at all except to make them nauseous. The media, and politicians, should be ensuring that the public are well educated in why over-prescribing anti-biotics is dangerous so that when they come to see their GP they trust their GPs decision.

I’m not suggesting that the NHS doesn’t have places where it could improve and i’m not suggesting that government oversight and public accountability is not an important part of a democratic society and a critical part of a successful health system. What i’m suggesting is that the status quo opinion should not be that the NHS is disorganised and inefficient, it shouldn’t be that nurses and doctors don’t provide the best care possible – it should be that in the vast majority of cases the NHS delivers the highest quality of care, completely free, to all who need it. Despite facing a shrinking budget, and a population that is eating, drinking and smoking itself into a early grave, the staff of the NHS still deliver the highest standard of care to the vast majority of cases every single day. I think that is something to be proud of.

Last week, BBC Newsnight discussed end of life care and the much vilified Liverpool Care Pathway. I respect the views of all, I try to find time to understand even the most extreme views, but in a discussion about providing the best possible end of life care I found it confusing that anti-euthanasia campaigners were invited. The Liverpool Care Pathway is about providing dying patients the highest possible quality of life in their final moments and hours, it is about making sure that they are provided with the best supportive therapy so that they are comfortable, and that they pass away peacefully in circumstances and surroundings of their choosing.

However, some news organisations, find it necessary to suggest that the LCP exists to kill patients. They find it necessary to suggest that doctors are placing patients on the pathway when it is not in their best interests. I find this notion as a medical student offensive. I find the notion that any health care professional in the NHS wishes to kill patients, or do harm, offensive. The vast majority of NHS workers, spend every day, providing the best possible care to millions of people. The press do not show the millions of happy and healthy people treated successfully by the NHS, simply because that is not what sells newspapers.

My aunt was diagnosed with Alzheimers around 5 years ago. Her condition had declined significantly to the point where she could no longer swallow, and rather than perform a needless invasive procedure which would have necessitated her being brought into hospital, she was allowed to die in peace in her nursing home, surrounded by her family. My relative no longer had the means to communicate, she no longer had the ability to get up out of bed, she had no quality of life. Invasively providing fluids was in no-ones best interests, it would simply prolong her inevitable death, and more importantly it would prolong her suffering.

The danger with the vilification of the LCP is that it may prevent other people being cared for in the best possible way in their final moments, it may mean that doctors are more likely to bring dying patients into hospital and perform needless procedures on them that do nothing but lower the patients quality of life, simply because relatives believe that the LCP is a tool for killing their family member. It also does not get to the root cause of the problem, the problem is not with the LCP, it is with communication between the healthcare team and relatives. It is that which must be solved, and that which should be being widely discussed.

I support a free press, but there is also a significant danger of un-informed and dangerous mis-information being promoted by certain unscrupulous editors and journalists. Social responsibility is being ignored in favour of circulation and sales.