A senior GP is under investigation for telling gay junior doctors to avoid acting effeminately around patients.
Dr Coales is a senior member of the Royal College of General Practitioners’ Council and earlier this year narrowly missed out on being elected its president.
She made her comments in a guidebook for junior doctors sitting their ‘Clinical Skills Assessments’, which are exams taken in their final year.
Here are some of the advice that she is giving to young trainees in her guidebook:
‘One candidate was facing a third sitting and yet no one had told him that his mannerisms, gait and speech were too overtly gay.
‘So I advised him to lower and deepen his high-pitched voice and neutralise his body movements.
‘He went back to his surgery, practised his speech until his voice went hoarse and modified his body language. Not only did he pass his exam, but he informed me he noticed a huge difference in the way patients interacted with him.’
She also told women not to wear flowery dresses because ‘if you dress like a nurse they [patients] have difficulty believing they are seeing “the doctor”.’
She also advises doctors from Africa and Asia to try speaking in ‘lyrical’ Scottish or Welsh accents if they wanted jobs in those countries.
The Royal College of GPs has now launched an inquiry into her comments, which have provoked outrage on the social networking site Twitter. Dr Coales, who trained in America before becoming a GP in South London, could now be ordered to leave the College.
