Don't act 'too gay' if you want to become a doctor, senior British GP tells trainees... and if you're Asian, try to sound Welsh or Scottish

I knew a doctor once who took over a busy practice but who proclaimed his homosexuality.  His practice soon dwindled to nothing  -- so the advice below is good advice for all its "incorrectness"

A senior GP is under investigation for telling gay junior doctors to avoid acting effeminately around patients.

Dr Una Coales said if they deepened their voices and changed the way they walked they would stand a better chance of impressing their examiners.

In a guidebook written for medics sitting clinical skills tests, she advised doctors from Africa and Asia to try speaking in ‘lyrical’ Scottish or Welsh accents if they wanted jobs in those countries.

And she told women doctors not to wear overly-feminine, flowery dresses – in case patients mistake them for nurses. Bizarrely, she even advised overweight medical students to project an ‘image of Santa Claus’ by interlocking their fingers over their bellies.

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. In one passage, she wrote: ‘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”.’

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.

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