Doctors slam “unprovoked and unjustified” media attack on GP for working remotely

Thousands of doctors are demanding an apology for the way a GP was targeted and criticised in media reports this week. They have signed a petition condemning the reports carried widely in the press on 29 November about the Cornwall based GP Justine Hall, who was working remotely for her former practice in Sussex because it was struggling to recruit another GP.

The petition, organised by the campaigning and pressure group GP Survival, said that the negative press stories, which appeared in the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Sun, and Daily Mirror, amounted to an “unprovoked and unjustified attack on a hardworking GP.” As The BMJ went to press the group was also preparing complaint letters to those newspapers along with one to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), which regulates them.

The BMJ understands that the press reports followed a complaint from a patient who was …