Responsibilities of psychiatrists who provide expert opinion to courts and trubunals

The Special Committee for Professional Practice and Ethics was asked by the Registrar of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2012 to develop new guidelines concerning the ethical duties of psychiatrists giving evidence as experts in different kinds of court. These new guidelines were intended in part to be a response to the duties of expert witnesses that were being formulated by the courts themselves in the context of review of the costs of expert testimony. They were also aimed at further acknowledging that giving evidence as a psychiatric expert is a competency that cannot be assumed, but has to be acquired to an accepted standard in order to meet revalidation requirements. Some recent cases brought before the General Medical Council (GMC) and the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) that have found psychiatrists' fitness to practise impaired because of deficiencies in their work as expert witnesses also suggest that psychiatrists may need more explicit guidance on their duties as experts.
Source: Current Awareness Service for Health (CASH) - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news