Partha Kar, a Royal Faculty of Physicians (RCP) councillor, has stated that the school’s lack of a whistleblower coverage left him with “no different” however to breach its guidelines and considers its plan to droop his fellowship for a 12 months to be out of proportion.
Final month an RCP standing panel of censors discovered that Kar, marketing consultant in diabetes and endocrinology and a BMJ columnist, had breached its code of conduct, social media guidelines, 2025 election candidate code, and confidentiality guidelines.
Among the many issues mentioned by the panel had been social media posts on Kar’s X account that included “identifiable” council papers and “confidential info” on a gathering between the RCP, the Normal Medical Council, and NHS England on affiliate membership for doctor associates (PAs) and the council’s submission to Gillian Leng’s evaluation of PAs.
In documentation seen by The BMJ the panel acknowledged Kar’s “issues round affected person security” however stated that “as a member of PA oversight group and council he had methods to affect the PA debate with out transgressing the codes and byelaws of the RCP.” Its suggestion that Kar be suspended for a 12 months is ready to be mentioned by the council on 16 July.
The panel admitted, “In reaching our suggestion, we wish to acknowledge that this has been a turbulent interval for the RCP, notably across the problem of doctor associates.”
In an electronic mail to council colleagues, additionally seen by The BMJ, Kar stated that he didn’t dispute the breach of religion however that the 2 cases “had been as a result of lack of an inside course of or whistleblowing coverage, which compelled me to behave based mostly on the responsibility of candour.”
He highlighted “the necessity for transparency” in council conferences and flagged that the King’s Fund’s impartial evaluation into the school’s extraordinary normal assembly (EGM) on PAs had discovered a “perceived lack of transparency.”1 “I reiterate that, within the absence of some other functioning system, there was no different,” he added.
Council video leak
The panel stated that posts on the X social media web site detailing Kar’s intention to face for scientific vice chairman, in addition to posts confirming the nomination and alleging that his nomination had been blocked, breached election codes that “solely [permit] use of social media as soon as the record of candidates is made public.”
The panel additionally investigated a leaked video of a council assembly from November 2024, which “appeared on YouTube on 24 March 2025” from an nameless account and “brought on large reputational injury for the RCP with the Normal Medical Council and NHS England.”
The panel admitted that it had “no direct proof to hyperlink Kar to [the video’s] look” however raised issues that he had not initially informed the panel, when requested, that he had downloaded the video. It stated, “His response to the impact of this leak doesn’t appear to acknowledge the gravity of the scenario or its affect on the status of the RCP.”
Kar informed colleagues, “I used to be formally permitted to view this because of my objection in regards to the content material of the minutes . . . I might submit that if I had no hesitation in breaching the religion because of wider public security, I might have put the video myself within the public area. I categorically haven’t.” He added that there had been “a number of examples of election guidelines being breached, canvassing by many amongst the council, none of which has drawn censure of this nature” and stated that colleagues must query “how proportionate this response is.”
Kar continued, “Extra importantly, there are earlier and current senior executives whose actions across the RCP EGM [and] knowledge points led to important injury to the RCP’s status . . . But not a single particular person has confronted any such sanctions, not to mention an investigation, regardless of it being raised.”
The EGM, which had been set as much as talk about the regulation, scope of follow, and growth of PAs, was solely the third within the faculty’s historical past of greater than 500 years.2 On the time, members described the assembly as “actually aggressive” and an “unmitigated catastrophe.”1
After the EGM there have been a number of excessive degree resignations from the school: its former president Sarah Clarke,3 registrar Cathryn Edwards,4 former deputy registrar Jamie Learn,5 and, after the King’s Fund evaluation, the chair of the board of trustees, David Croisdale-Appleby.6
An RCP spokesperson informed The BMJ, “We are able to verify that this case is being reviewed by RCP council tomorrow [16 July]. We gained’t be commenting additional till the method concludes.”