A doctor has appeared before the Medical Council’s fitness to practise committee charged with five counts of professional misconduct over the alleged “forgery” of two sick notes after he missed an exam.
The doctor, who currently works at Limerick University Hospital, has worked in a number of different hospitals in Ireland for the last 12 years, the committee heard.
He has been on an ophthalmology training programme in Limerick since July 2012 and had applied to the Royal College of Ophthalmologists in London to sit the first part of the college’s fellowship exams on October 6th, 2014.
Eoghan O'Sullivan BL, for the chief executive of the Medical Council, told the hearing that the allegations effectively boiled down to the authenticity of two medical certificates furnished to third parties in October 2014, one dated October 4th and the other dated October 7th.
The fitness to practise committee heard the doctor, referred to as Dr A, did not present to sit the exam, for which the fee was £550 (about €654).
He subsequently contacted the Royal College and requested that they defer his exam to the next available date, saying he had been unable to sit it due to health reasons.
Dr A emailed a handwritten certificate to the college in London on headed paper from the South Infirmary University Hospital in Cork dated October 7th, indicating he had been admitted to the hospital on October 4th for treatment of an abscess on his tonsils, and that he was discharged on October 6th.
The head of examinations at the Royal College asked the Cork hospital to investigate the authenticity of the document signed by a “Dr Massood Khan”.
It found there was no evidence of Dr A ever having been admitted to the hospital, that the medical record number quoted in the document had never been issued by the hospital and that Dr Massood was not a registered medical practitioner and did not work at the hospital.
Dr A then furnished the college with a medical certificate dated October 4th, 2014, and signed by Dr Muhammad, an ENT registrar at South Infirmary University Hospital in Cork.
The certificate indicated that Dr A had been examined by him on that date at the hospital for an infection in the right ear.
The committee heard evidence from Dr Muhammad, who confirmed he had carried out the examination of Dr A on October 4th at the ENT department on a “collegiate” basis.
Dr Muhammad confirmed that he had seen Dr A again on October 20th and that Dr A had at that stage sought a retrospective certificate to deal with the ear infection diagnosis on October 4th.
On that occasion, Dr A had also presented to Dr Muhammad a GP referral letter from the Stillorgan, Co Dublin-based Doctor on Call service, dated October 4th.
The committee heard the referral was on notepaper from the Doctor on Call service with a Stillorgan address, even though the service had moved some four years previously to the South Circular Road.
‘Fraudulent’
In oral evidence, Prof Stephen Lane, a consultant respiratory and general physician, said the act of "fraudulently" writing out such a certificate in the name of a non-existent doctor would, in his view, be either "disgraceful or dishonourable" and constitute professional misconduct.
He said signing the document or arranging for it to be signed made no difference. In his view, it was the same issue and constituted professional misconduct.
Mr O’Sullivan said Dr A had made an initial mistake, “followed by an awful lot of digging”.
Paul Anthony McDermott SC, for Dr A, said the council “didn’t bother to take the basic step necessary to prove the case”, by getting a sample of Dr A’s handwriting to compare it to the two documents.
He said it had always been the practice of the Medical Council not to bring allegations using the terminology of criminal law and that forgery was a criminal offence.
He said the burden of proof was beyond reasonable doubt, and it was “not merely an otiose charge” but also a “dangerous charge”.
Mr McDermott said Dr A had made a “tragic mistake”, and that finding him guilty would “destroy a young doctor’s life to in effect convict him of forgery”.
He said it had been legitimate for Dr A to seek to defer the exam, but he had “got himself in a terrible mess by the means to which he sought to achieve an end that was achievable”.
The committee adjourned to Tuesday.