Reports > Death Disguised > CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Shipman's Character and Motivation >
Professional Reputation
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Shipman had the reputation in Hyde of being a good and caring doctor. He was held in very high regard by the overwhelming majority of his patients. He was also respected by fellow professionals. His patients appear to have regarded him as the best doctor in Hyde. His register was full and there always seems to have been a waiting list. Patients liked him for a variety of reasons. Many would say that he 'always had time' for them. His surgeries overran but no one minded because they understood his wish to take whatever time was necessary for each patient. He never hurried them out. He always had time for a few words of a personal nature. Elderly patients and their families were particularly grateful for his willingness to visit at home. Other doctors might be reluctant to visit and might try to insist that a patient be brought to the surgery. Shipman never did that. With the benefit of hindsight, one can see that this willingness to make home visits created many opportunities for killing. At the time, it seemed to his patients only to show that he was considerate of their welfare. There must, in fact, have been many occasions when the consideration he showed for his patients was not simply a cover for criminal actions.
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| 13.22 |
There is, however, a deeply sinister aspect to the way in which Shipman created for himself the reputation of being a very caring doctor. He encouraged people to regard him as an 'old-fashioned family doctor' who would willingly visit his patients at home and made a habit of calling on them when he was in their area. I am sure he promoted this view of himself quite deliberately. Dr Patel, of the Brooke Practice, told the Inquiry of an occasion when Shipman had asked him to sign a cremation Form C for one of his patients. On reading the Form B, Dr Patel noticed that Shipman had been present at the death. He observed that this was rather unusual. In what might now be seen as an example of attack being the best form of defence, Shipman responded rather aggressively, putting the young Dr Patel firmly in his place. He asserted that young doctors nowadays do not visit their patients as he and his generation did. The implication was that they were not as caring as he. He also let it be known that he thought it preferable that elderly patients should be allowed to die at home 'with dignity' instead of being subject to the 'hustle and bustle' of a hospital ward. It may be that many of his patients agreed. Certainly, there would be more work for the general practitioner in caring for an elderly patient at home. However, it is hard to resist the conclusion that these habits created many opportunities to kill which would not otherwise arise and that his reputation in respect of these matters was a useful 'cover' for his killings.
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| 13.23 |
There is no doubt that Shipman was also industrious. When he took his first post in general practice at the Abraham Ormerod Medical Centre, Todmorden, his partners found him keen and hardworking. He was always willing to take on more than his fair share of out of hours work. He volunteered to do the donkey-work involved in the introduction of a new method of filing. In 1998, he had a list of almost 3100 patients. That represented a very large caseload, substantially greater than the average list of single-handed general practitioners in Tameside, which was under 2500. He worked long hours. There was never any delay in arranging an appointment and it appears that there were very few occasions when he failed to visit a patient on the day of request. He was a regular attender at continuing education sessions at Manchester and Liverpool Universities and at Tameside General Hospital. In general, he seems to have been a good administrator and appears to have maintained the loyalty of his staff. He had a poor relationship with one member of the practice staff at the Donneybrook Surgery, whom he regarded as incompetent. The other doctors did not share that view and it may be that there was a personality clash. Several members of the Donneybrook staff chose to leave their employment with that practice in 1992 and move with him to his new premises at Market Street.
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| 13.24 |
His Achilles' heel as an administrator appears to have been his keeping of medical records. He was a poor record-keeper. His notes were usually scanty and often incomplete in important respects. That criticism does not only apply to the entries associated with a killing. Why his record-keeping was so poor, I cannot say. He might not have thought the records very important and so gave them a low priority, but on other occasions there were without doubt more sinister reasons for this failure, as I have explained in previous Chapters.
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Other Explanations
