A DOCTOR who altered the notes of a patient after he attempted suicide in the Mater hospital, Dublin, has been found guilty of professional misconduct.
A fitness-to-practise committee of the Medical Council has recommended Dr Samuel McManus (31), with an address in Sandymount, Dublin, be admonished in relation to his conduct.
The committee, chaired by Dr Deirdre Madden, reserved its judgment in the case last month.
In its verdict, published yesterday, the committee found him guilty of five of the seven allegations levelled against him.
Evidence was given that Dr McManus altered and added to the notes of an Eritrean asylum seeker who was admitted to the Mater on the night of April 12th, 2008, after being pulled from the river Liffey.
Dr McManus, who was then a senior house officer as part of his GP training, saw the 47-year-old man on April 13th. The man told him: “I have a voice in my heart, one good, one bad, telling me to hurt myself.”
After consulting by phone with consultant psychiatrist Prof Patricia Casey, Dr McManus admitted the man to the hospital’s psychiatric unit at 2pm. At 3.30pm he went for a shower. He was checked at 3.40pm. When he was checked again at 3.50pm he was found hanging from the shower frame by his shoelace. He died two weeks later.
On April 14th, it was discovered Dr McManus had altered the notes. In a different pen, he had crossed out the words “high” and “risk” in the phrase “high suicide risk” and added the word “attempt”. He also entered the word “denied” beside the phrase “suicide ideation”. Dr McManus also added retrospectively his patient plan for the man.
Counsel for Dr McManus, Simon Mills, said his client accepted he had made retrospective changes to his notes, but did not accept that amounted to misconduct. The committee ruled that the alterations to the records significantly changed their meaning and the failure to clearly identify them as retrospective changes represented “a serious falling short of the standards expected of medical practitioners”.