Woman faked qualifications and worked in uk as a psychiatrist for 20 years

This is extraordinary. 20 years. There is something seriously wrong in this profession if this went undetected for so long. Did she not have regular professional conversations with her seniors, those in charge, her colleagues nurses etc.? Her not being properly vetted doesn't come anywhere close to an explanation for this. Methinks there is something rotten in the state of psychiatry.
 
Starlight said:
This is extraordinary. 20 years. There is something seriously wrong in this profession if this went undetected for so long. Did she not have regular professional conversations with her seniors, those in charge, her colleagues nurses etc.? Her not being properly vetted doesn't come anywhere close to an explanation for this. Methinks there is something rotten in the state of psychiatry.
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There is no one 'senior' to a consultant as far as i'm aware. But certainly her colleagues & others should have known.
 
John Mac said:
All you need is to be full of BS and have the brass neck to spout it.
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Yes this was my reaction.
JemPD said:
There is no one 'senior' to a consultant as far as i'm aware. But certainly her colleagues & others should have known.
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:wtf: I’ve been quite physically active today getting stuff out of boxes from my refurb so not much energy left for brain i had skimmed the article and the fact she blagged being a consultant escaped me. I’m gobsmacked.
 
Think I recall a story about a nurse doing something similar?

This is worse though. Ppl may have died, had inappropriate treatment, been sectione, etc. probably didn't look any different to normal because psychiatrists wield too much power based on flimsy or non-existent evidence.
 
Well and who remembers Gert Postel.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Postel

Gert Postel went to Hauptschule and finished his training as a mail carrier. Postel himself said that his mother died because of a maladministered depression treatment and that he himself had briefly been in a juvenile ward. From these events, he claimed to have gained the motivation to expose and embarrass psychiatry.

In September 1982, Postel successfully applied for the position of assistant public health officer in Flensburg using the pseudonym of "Dr. med. Dr. phil.Clemens Bartholdy". When asked about his dissertation's subject, he reportedly replied "On Pseudologia phantastica[with regard to] the example of the character Felix Krull from the homonymous novel by Thomas Mannand cognitively induced distortions in stereotypical judgment".[1]

Due to coincidence, his true identity was discovered in April 1983 and Postel had to leave his position in public service. In 1984, he received a suspended sentenceand was placed on probation for multiple instances of forgery of documents, unauthorized assumption of academic titles and forgery of health certificates. Also during the eighties, by his own account, he lived seven years in a partnership with a judge.

Other employments as a medical doctor followed, e.g. in a private clinic and as a surgeon major with the Bundeswehr.
 
Plot twist would be if fake psychs were on average actually genuinely helpful for patients because they didn't undergo traditional training and just applied common sense and looked up meds on wikipedia between appointments. Because the few I have seen very evidently didn't do either of those things and made up their expertise as well despite - to my knowledge - being traditional MDs with proper training and all that stuff.

Probably doesn't apply to the woman from the article though, preying on demented patients is, like, totally not cool man. There is no effective psychopath screening for jobs in general, no?
 
Well, out on a limb here but the fact that the person didn't have the degree while not a good thing it doesn't mean they didn't know what they were doing IMO. People can learn outside the classroom (where they pick up bad habits) and can learn as they go from their peers.

There are some job situations that make this dangerous but if they were very good at their job (which I think is at least possible) they might have avoided all the numbing stupidity that gets inculcated like it's written on stone tablets never to be revised).

The learning/work environment some professions are entrenched in can have a feed back of stifled thinking.
That said, if a person doesn't want to get caught out they may keep their head down so to speak and not rock the boat so who knows.

I'm just not convinced that going to school and writing the tests is what makes for a good . . . whatever.
 
It's all about 'foreign' doctors on the BBC though isn't it? And the GMC are as bad. Looks to me like this was only discovered because of her later actions and the GMC are only reviewing current 'foreign' doctor registrations because of media campaigns:

Alemi was jailed for fraud in October after she faked a dementia patient's will in an attempt to inherit her £1.3m estate.

Now, following an investigation by Cumbria newspaper the News and Star, a review has been triggered.

The licences of potentially thousands of doctors are being looked at.
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NelliePledge said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-46258687

This woman exploited a loophole at the time to avoid having her knowledge tested. What does it say about psychiatry that you can get away with no qualifications for this long without any peers picking up on it.
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Kind of makes you wonder what difference the qualifications make. (Sorry to all those good psychs - it's a tongue in cheek comment).
 
You'd think that performance reviews and CPD accreditation and other training she received might have indicated she wasn't qualified. But then as she wasn't for example performing surgery - where I assume the chance of mistakes being noticed is higher - perhaps with things like psychology and psychiatry, once you are in the door nobody really notices? Very worrying.
 
Maybe she came to the UK just claiming she had a medical degree, and got her clinical training in psychiatry as a junior doctor here, and worked her way up. So she would have learned how to be a psychiatrist here. I wonder how much of what psychiatrists do every day requires them to know stuff learned in an undergraduate medical degree.
 
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