A British GP Hounded Out Of Medicine By Muslim Claims

by Hugh Fitzgerald

A disturbing story about the travails of a British GP here:

“A GP has revealed he is planning to quit medicine over an investigation by the doctors watchdog into claims he ‘discriminated’ against a Muslim woman for asking her to remove her veil.

“Dr Keith Wolverson said he ‘politely’ asked the woman to take off the garment for patient safety reasons during a consultation last year because he was unable to hear her explain her sick daughter’s symptoms.

“He was then ‘deeply upset’ when last week he received a letter from the General Medical Council, the professional regulator, informing him that he was subject to an inquiry over allegations of racial discrimination which could result in him being struck off.

“Last night, Dr Wolverson, who has practised as a GP for 23 years and has an unblemished record, said regardless of the outcome of the investigation he now plans to leave his job.

“He said: ‘I feel a major injustice has taken place. This is why you are waiting so long to see your GP and doctors are leaving in droves. This country will have no doctors left if we continue to treat them in this manner. I’m deeply upset.

‘A doctor’s quest to perform the very finest consultation for the safety of the patient has been misinterpreted in a duplicitous manner to suggest there has been an act of racism committed. I absolutely no longer want to be a doctor.’

“Dr Wolverson told how the Muslim woman brought her daughter, aged ten or 11, to see him at a walk-in centre at Royal Stoke University Hospital in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, last June.

“The doctor said he asked the woman to remove the veil as he was unable to hear her explain her sick daughter’s symptoms because of the niqab she was wearing

“The mother said she was concerned the child had tonsillitis.

‘But the 52-year-old GP struggled to hear the mother’s account of the girl’s health problems because her speech was being obscured by her niqab – a garment worn by some Muslim women that covers the body and face apart from the eyes.

“The doctor said he ‘politely’ asked the woman to remove the veil covering her face so he could be sure what she was saying.

“I asked her, would you kindly remove your face veil please because it makes communication very difficult,’ Dr Wolverson explained. ‘Normally this issue doesn’t arise because patients automatically do so.

‘“One would think that any parent would be wholly supportive and grateful that a doctor was trying to safely treat their child.”

“According to Dr Wolverson, the mother complied with his request without raising any objections.

“But half an hour after the consultation, her husband arrived and declared he was making a complaint about the GP’s behaviour.

‘He sat outside my consultation room and threateningly made eye contact towards me whenever I went out to fetch each patient,’ Dr Wolverson said. ‘He then made a formal complaint and I was prevented from working at the walk-in centre again.’

“It has since emerged that NHS bosses sent the GMC a form outlining the complaints. It says the woman told the doctor she did not want to remove the veil on religious grounds but he refused to continue the consultation unless she did.

Should we not believe Dr. Wolverton, when he said the child’s mother “complied with his request without raising any objection”? There are two possible reasons for her to have changed her story. It might be that she herself changed it to a tale of forced removal, so as to avoid being punished by her husband for having voluntarily removed the covering over her face. Or another obvious possibility: the husband, enraged at the doctor’s request to his wife, decided to have her change her story, and to now claim that the doctor had threatened to end the consultation unless she removed her face veil. And then the husband could make those wild charges of “racism” and “discrimination,” and malevolently get the doctor in deep trouble for trying tonly o do the best job he could.

“Dr. Wolverson is now facing an inquiry but he said that, regardless of its outcome, he does not want to work as a GP anymore.

“It claims he was ‘rude’ and ‘gave her a dirty look’, leaving her shocked and crying. She said she felt ‘victimised and racially discriminated’ against.

His “unblemished record,” including the fact that he had treated, without any complaints, many Muslim patients (which is why he could claim that “normally this issue doesn’t arise because [niqab-wearing] patients [when asked to uncover] automatically do so”), make Dr. Wolverson’s version fair more credible than that given by the husband. Who in his right mind does not see the husband’s version as a made-up story, with that supposed “dirty look” of the doctor that left the wife “shocked and crying”? Why did no one else at the doctor’s office apparently see her shocked state, or hear her crying?? And as for that all-purpose Muslim complaint of feeling “victimized and racially discriminated against,” such claims of victimhood by Muslims are standard fare and must be taken with a grain of salt. She “felt victimized” does not mean that she was “victimized.’; There is a real victim here — the doctor himself – who has been so disturbed by the unfair charges made against him and the GMC investigation, that he vows even if he is absolved, he has decided to give up his practice altogether. That’s a real, rather than factitious victim.

The mother was not the “victim” of anything but the doctor’s praiseworthy attention.. A careful GP taking a history, he wanted to hear –very clearly — her description of her daughter’s symptoms, and for that she needed to remove the face veil. As fo the mother’s charge of being “racially discriminated” against, for the millionth time we all must insist that Islam is a faith, not a race, that any anti-Muslim attitudes or behavior are not expressions of “racism,” no matter how many times Muslims and their apologists maintain otherwise. In any case, there is nothing to suggest that Dr. Wolverson has ever been anti-Muslim in any way; his only interest was in hearing what the mother was saying.

“Joyce Robins, from Patient Concern, said losing a doctor over the issue would be ‘criminal’. ‘A doctor needs to be sensitive to a patient’s religion but safety must always come first,’ she added.

“A spokesman for The Doctors’ Association UK said: ‘It is of utmost importance that the religious wishes of our patients are respected. However, evidently there are some circumstances where removal of a nib or burka is necessary for medical assessment and treatment.

‘The GMC should consider issuing clear guidelines to protect both doctors and our patients.’

“Human rights campaigner Aisha Ali-Khan tweeted: ‘I don’t believe [a] doctor should be prosecuted for doing his job *but* he should have asked for a female third party to help, or asked the patient to write down her medical complaints.’

How would a “female third party” have helped in this situation? Would she act as a kind of chaperone? What exactly would be her role? The mother had been asked by the GP only to uncover her mouth, so that she could be heard more clearly. Is it likely that this woman, for whom English was a second language, would be able put in writing her observations of her daughter’s illness? Isn’t it more likely that she was unable to write in English? And even if she could read and write in English, in a situation where the doctor has a series of questions to ask about the patient’s condition, think of how complicated and laborious it would be for the doctor to have to first write out a question, wait for the mother to read it, then write out her answer, and then, based on that answer, the doctor would write out another question, then wait for her to write out her answer, and so on. Doctors have a right to question patients (and in the case of children, their parents) as best and as efficiently they can, which here means taking a history orally from the patient’s mother.

How can it be “discrimination” for a GP to try to give the child patient the best possible care by ensuring he has heard from her mother, in a clear voice, about the child’s symptoms? How is it “discrimination” to ask the mother to remove her face veil in order to be able to hear her otherwise niqab-muffled voice? Dr. Wolverson has testified that when his other niqabbed patients were asked to remove the veil, they all complied without incident.

Here is a GP, being investigated because of complaints by a Muslim couple who claim that the wife has been “discriminated” against and has been the victim of “racism” for having been asked to remove her face veil. Apparently they want the GMC to ignore the doctor’s explanation that he had politely requested the mother to remove the face veil so that he could better hear her describe her daughter’s symptoms, and that she had promptly done so. All the rest of the Muslim couple’s tale — the wife being left “shocked and crying” at Dr. Wolverson’s request, the “discrimination” and “racism” she supposedly felt is the kind of whipped-up hysteria and victimhood that Muslims so often engage in. There is no evidence for the wife’s supposedly shocked mental state, or her anguish at supposed “discrimination” and “racism.” No one at the doctors’s office noticed anything untoward.. We have only the wife’s own testimony, which was likely scripted for her by her husband; against this we have the testimony of a doctor who has been practicing, for 23 years, with an “unblemished record”– not a single complaint against him until now– of serving Muslim and non-Muslim patients alike.

It would be nice to think that not only will these wild charges made against Dr. Wolverson, both baseless and cruel, soon be dismissed, but that the parents will be condemned by the GMC for attempting, with these false charges, to harm the reputation of a blameless doctor for doing nothing more than trying to clearly understand a patient’s condition.

The doctor has been greatly disturbed by these grotesque charges, and being made subject to the humiliation of an investigation by the General Medical Council. How many others, not only physicians, but teachers, policemen, lawyers, salesmen have been, or will be, vilified, like Dr Wolversson, by Muslims quick to charge others with non-existent ‘‘discrimination” and “racism”? Dr. Wolverson has announced that he will be leaving his practice altogether. Great Britain already has a shortage of GPs. Is this the result the authorities want?

First published in Jihad Watch.