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Posts Tagged ‘fitness to practise’

Bloodgate doctor can practise despite failings

BBC Health - 1st September 2010 10:05 am

The GMC has ruled that the doctor at the centre of the rugby Bloodgate scandal can practise medicine again.

Wendy Chapman cut the lip of Harlequins rugby player Tom Williams to cover up a bogus blood injury and later lied about her role in the event. Dr Chapman was suspended by the GMC in September 2009.

At the hearing in Manchester, the panel ruled that at the time of the events, her fitness to practise “was impaired”.

But it said “looking forward”, Dr Chapman’s fitness to practise was not impaired despite her actions, which it said were not in the best interests of her patient.

Dr Chapman admitted cutting the lip of the player to try to cover up a fake injury and later lying to a European Rugby Cup hearing.

The GMC hearing was told that Dr Chapman had been suffering from a “major depressive disorder” before the incident. She was also awaiting the result of breast cancer tests, the GMC panel heard.

Dr Chapman is currently recovering from breast cancer surgery, which took place in July.

Bloodgate doctor did not act in “player’s interests”

The Guardian - 28th August 2010 9:17 am

The doctor at the centre of the Bloodgate saga did not act in the best interests of the rugby player she cut to cover up a bogus injury, a disciplinary panel said today.

Dr Wendy Chapman previously said she was “ashamed” that she gave into pressure from the Harlequins winger Tom Williams, who wanted to conceal that, minutes earlier, he had bitten into a fake-blood capsule.

His fake injury meant a specialist goal kicker could come on to the pitch in the dying minutes of last April’s Heineken Cup rugby union quarter-final tie against Leinster, who held on to win 6-5.

Dr Chapman had already admitted almost all the charges levelled against her by the General Medical Council, which said her conduct on the matchday, and at a later European Rugby Cup disciplinary hearing, was likely to bring the profession into disrepute and was dishonest.

Consultant “didn’t break data protection rules”

By Francesca Robinson - 8:20 am

A senior diabetes consultant who was sacked for gross misconduct after faxing patient records from her hospital to a community clinic has been exonerated by the GMC.

The South Warwickshire General Hospitals Trust (SWGHT) accused Dr Shirine Boardman of breaching patient confidentiality when she sent the names and contact details of more than 80 diabetes patients to her secretary at the Apnee Sehat NHS clinic in Leamington Spa.

Boardman’s aim was to invite the patients to a structured education programme to help them manage their diabetes. She was acting in according with NICE guidance. At the time all trusts had a statutory requirement to provide this patient education.

The award winning Apnee Sehat clinic (meaning “our health” in Punjabi) was a pilot service set up by Warwickshire Primary Care Trust to provide clinical care and help to disadvantaged members of the Asian community. Boardman led the establishment of the project in 2007 as part of her employment contract with Warwick Hospital.

But the SWGHT complained that Boardman made an unauthorised transfer of confidential data from the trust in breach of GMC guidance, the Data Protection Act and the trust’s data protection policy.

The case was sent to the Information Commissioner for an alleged criminal breach of the Data Protection Act in July 2008. Shortly afterwards Boardman was sacked. The decision was later upheld by an employment tribunal.

But the Information Commissioner dropped the case and the GMC has now scrapped a fitness to practise hearing saying that Boardman acted “solely to benefit patients”.

Dr Keith Brent, deputy chairman of the BMA’s consultants committee, said: “There seems never to have been any question that Dr Boardman was anything other than a good clinician providing good care to her patients.”

Dr Sue Roberts, former government diabetes tsar, comented: “The dismissal of Dr Boardman was fundamentally unreasonable in that it disregarded good medical practice in the treatment of diabetes.”

Boardman, who has four clinical excellence awards and has won four national awards for her work, said she had been shocked by the speed with which she had been sacked.

It has taken her two years to do the research to understand the NHS data protection laws, to obtain information from the trust through Freedom of Information requests and to get the right legal experts and witnesses to help her fight her case.

“I don’t think in medical school or specialist training anybody ever told me the kind of trouble we could get into as doctors. The minute something goes wrong it’s enormously important to get the right advice from the right people because a lot could have been done to save me before I was dismissed,” she said.

Peter Bottomley, the Conservative MP for Worthing West, has raised Boardman’s case in Parliament and is calling for the individuals at SWGHT who made the complaint to account for their actions. If this does not happen he says he will be pressing health secretary Andrew Lansley to conduct a review.

He would also like the case to be investigated by the Equalities Commission. He said: “It is now clear Dr Boardman was right and they were wrong and their allegations and smears were unjustified. In my experience no male or no white consultant has ever been treated like this.”

A trust spokesman said: “The trust’s actions were in the best interests of patients as the breach of patients’ confidential information is a serious matter and one which patients themselves also take very seriously.”

Tags: Equality, fitness to practise, Suspended
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Doctor cut the lip of rugby’s ‘bloodgate’ winger

BBC Health - 23rd August 2010 4:48 pm

A doctor has admitted cutting the lip of Harlequins rugby player Tom Williams to enable the winger to pretend to be injured during a Heineken Cup match.

A GMC panel has been told how Williams became “extremely panicked” after he bit into a fake blood capsule and was challenged about the authenticity of his “injury”.

He then asked Dr Wendy Chapman to cut him and she agreed, the panel was told. The ‘bloodgate’ incident allowed a goal-kicker to be brought on the pitch.

Dr Chapman, who was suspended from her post as a consultant at Kent’s Maidstone Hospital last September, is appearing before the GMC to face allegations her conduct was likely to bring the profession into disrepute and was dishonest.

GMC to investigate the length of hearings

Healthcare Republic - 2nd August 2010 9:05 am

A GMC working group is to investigate a rise in the duration of fitness-to-practise hearings and offer advice on how the process could be improved.

The move follows warnings from medico-legal experts that lengthier hearings are causing doctors greater financial and psychological stress.

Dr Michael Devlin, head of medical advisory services at the Medical Defence Union, said there was ‘no doubt’ cases had become longer and more complex in the past decade.

The number of heads of charge - specific claims made against a doctor - proposed by the GMC in an average case had risen sharply, he said.

‘In the past, 10 to 15 heads of charge might have been the average. [Now] it is not unusual to have in excess of 50 heads of charge,’ Dr Devlin said.

Medic “fondled patient’s breasts and tapped bottom”

This Is Derbyshire - 25th July 2010 9:37 pm

A top psychiatrist allegedly fondled a patient’s breasts and made lewd comments after she expressed concerns about breast feeding.

Dr Andrew Clayton, former joint medical director of Derbyshire Mental Health Services NHS Trust, also tapped the pregnant patient on her bottom, a GMC hearing was told.

Dr Clayton is alleged to have behaved in a sexually motivated way towards two female patients and to trainee members of staff.

He has already been placed on the sex offenders’ register after last year pleading guilty at Derby Crown Court to possessing indecent images of children.

More face GMC fitness to practise panels

By Mike Broad - 24th May 2010 10:17 pm

A third more doctors faced GMC fitness to practise panel hearings in 2009 than the previous year.

The GMC’s annual report on the number of complaints received about doctors reveals that 270 panel hearings took place in 2009 compared with 204 in 2008.

This led to 85 doctors being erased from the medical register in 2009. Sixty eight were struck off at a panel hearing and 15 at review hearings, compared to 42 at panel hearings in 2008.

The most common allegation resulting in erasure from the register in 2009 related to improper relationships with patients - 15 cases in total.

The most common hearing outcome was suspension, with 77 doctors being suspended. The largest proportion of doctors appearing before a panel were specialists at 45%, followed by GPs on 37%.

The GMC believes that the increase is due to more enquiries being made by NHS, police and other public authorities, which has risen significantly since 2006. Referrals from these groups are likely to be more serious and therefore more likely to progress through to a public hearing. Overall the number of enquiries rose by 11% last year.

Paul Philip, director of standards and fitness to practise, said: “We are seeing an increasing number of referrals to our fitness to practise procedures from employers and other public authorities like the police but the reasons for this are not entirely clear. What is clear is that although there has been an increase in the number of cases the overall numbers represent a very small proportion of the 230,000 registered doctors in the UK.”

Doctors, however, suggested the rise was due to the imminent introduction of revalidation and employers seeking to get their houses in order.

Over three quarters of all doctors who went before a fitness to practise panel in 2009 were found to be impaired. A lower proportion of UK-qualified doctors faced impairment at the hands of the GMC than those who qualified in either Europe or further afield.

Tags: fitness to practise, GMC
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Surgeon struck off for wrongly removing testicle

BBC Health - 28th April 2010 9:02 am

A surgeon who cut off a patient’s testicle by mistake has been struck off the medical register.

Dr Sulieman Al Hourani was only supposed to take out a cyst but removed the whole right testicle instead. The blunder happened at Fairfield General Hospital in Bury, Greater Manchester, in September 2007.

Dr Al Hourani, who has returned to his native Jordan, was found guilty of misconduct by a GMC fitness to practise panel.

The locum surgeon was struck off in his absence and refused to engage in the proceedings.

Medical notes made it “perfectly clear” the procedure was to be “excision of right epididymal cyst”, a disciplinary hearing was told.

The hearing was also told that in August 2006, Dr Al Hourani had injected himself with two milligrams (mg) of midazolam, a powerful sedative, which was meant for a patient.

Hospital staff said the doctor, who was on call, appeared unsteady on his feet and was later found in the doctors’ mess room “deeply asleep” and taken to A&E.

Dr Al Hourani was issued with a final warning over that incident but was eventually dismissed by his employers, Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, in October 2007 over allegations he stole two boxes of dihydrocodeine tablets.

Struggling students more likely to face GMC later

By Mike Broad - 8:15 am

Male doctors from lower income groups, who have experienced academic difficulties at medical school, are more likely to find themselves in front of the GMC for professional misconduct, a study reveals.

The research compared the applications and medical school progress of 59 GMC misconduct cases with 236 individuals who had not been referred to the GMC.

The majority of individuals (69%) had completed their medical courses between 1968 and 1987.

The results show that GMC misconduct cases were more likely to be male and from lower social class groups and they were more likely to have failed exams, repeated parts of their courses or had a lower overall performance than their peers. The misconduct cases were also less likely to have achieved consultant status or to be on the GP register.

The authors, Janet Yates and David James from the University of Nottingham Medical School, said that the lower social class background is “a sensitive finding” and one that they cannot explain. However, they are not suggesting “that such students should be viewed differently to any others because we have demonstrated only a relative risk, and the absolute risk for an individual from any background is small”.

Poorly performing students should receive additional support and mentoring and that more detailed research in this area needs to be carried out, they concluded in the bmj.com.

In an accompanying editorial, Alison Reid from the New South Wales Medical Board, in Australia, said the research is important.

She said: “Attempts to identify medical students who are at risk of subsequent professional misconduct should be encouraged because this offers the opportunity for support and remediation if possible, or if not, redirection of the student into a more suitable area of study. This is not just a matter of public protection; students deserve support and assistance and must have realistic career expectations.”

Read the research at bmj.com.

Tags: fitness to practise, Medical students
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Doctors can experience virtual GMC hearing

By Mike Broad - 15th February 2010 10:36 am

The GMC aims to provide more support to doctors attending fitness to practise hearings by encouraging greater familiarisation with the process in advance.

An online hearing room will allow doctors, patients, and witnesses to take a virtual step inside a hearing, and users can tour the room and see who attends and why.

The site includes virtual versions of all those who might attend a hearing, such as lay and medical members of the panel, and a doctor’s representative. All 12 of these characters can be clicked on for an explanation of who they are and what role they play in a hearing. The site also shows the reception area and waiting rooms for doctors and witnesses so that anyone attending a hearing can arrive feeling more comfortable with their surroundings.

In addition, the GMC will provide doctors with a booklet about what to expect at hearings.

The GMC is also launching a project to support vulnerable witnesses. This project allows witnesses to come into the GMC’s buildings in advance of the hearing and be shown round. They can also ask to be joined by an independent ‘friend,’ assigned on the day of the hearing, to provide support.

Paul Philip, the GMC’s director of standards and fitness to practise, said: “The vast majority of doctors do a good job in often difficult circumstances. We know this because of the 218,000 doctors practising in the UK, we receive around 5,000 complaints per year, and around 200 come before a public hearing.

“But attending and giving evidence in a hearing can be a daunting process for members of the public and doctors alike. We hope that this initiative will offer some peace of mind to all those who are called to give evidence at our hearings, and that the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the process and the look and feel of a hearing will help to demystify it.”

Dr Nick Clements, head of medical services (Leeds) at MPS, commented: ”We should welcome this approach - it’s very useful material to assist people unfamiliar with the GMC process - whether they are a witness, or a doctor facing charges. It helps create a feeling of familiarity with the process that should help to reduce the stress associated with attending a hearing.”

View the virtual hearing room.

Read more about the Information for doctors initiative.

Tags: fitness to practise
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