- guardian.co.uk, Monday June 27 2005 12.05 BST
A disciplinary hearing against four of the six GPs who worked closely with serial killer Harold Shipman is to resume in Manchester today.
The General Medical Council (GMC) will resume the serious professional misconduct hearing against Shipman's colleagues who signed cremation forms for England's most prolific serial killer, who committed suicide while in prison last year.
The hearing was adjourned last December after two of the six doctors were cleared of any misconduct due to insufficient evidence.
The fitness to practise panel is expected to spend the day reading paperwork, and will reconvene tomorrow morning, when the defence case is expected to begin.
Between the six of them, the doctors signed 214 cremation forms for patients of Shipman being treated at his surgery in Hyde, Greater Manchester. It is thought he killed at least 250 patients over three decades.
In the earlier case, the GMC was told the doctors missed "extraordinary coincidences" surrounding the deaths.
If found guilty of misconduct the four doctors could be struck off the medical register and so be barred from practising; have conditions placed on how they practise; be suspended; or reprimanded.
The doctors are Jeremy Dirckze, Stephen Farrar, Alastair MacGillivray, and Susan Booth.
Earlier this year, the pharmacist who was responsible for dispensing the drug that Shipman used to kill his patients, diamorphine, was cleared of wrongdoing by the disciplinary committee for chemists, the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.
The GMC itself is currently under review after the Shipman inquiry, led by Dame Janet Smith, heavily criticised the watchdog. A government investigation of the GMC - headed by the chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson - is to look at making the council more effective in protecting patients and making information on doctors' performance more readily available.
