>Yes we are in a circular discussion! Minimum standards are outlined by Good
>Medical Practice and each Royal College has said what it means for them. The
>RCGP+GPC published a few years ago "Good medical Practice for GPs" or some
>such which as far as I recall outlined what would be optimum and what would
>be substandard & said most of us would lie between this heaven and earth.

FWIW my reading of both source and derivative documents provides no usable
information on when the line is crossed.

The apparent line is crossed by (almost) everyone sometimes, but in reality
most doctors are good doctors most of the time, and not even management,
let alone courts or GMC would deny this.

When real decisions have to be made the documents are almost useless
aspirational politically acceptable documents.

The GMC used to publish a "thou shalt not" book.  This was much clearer but
was superceded and replaced by Good Medical Practice.

As to lying between heaven and earth I though it was between heaven and
hell so earth would be good, but perhaps expectations are too low?

Julian