A doctor mistreated nine patients including allowing examinations to be done by staff who were not adequately trained and inappropriately prescribed drugs. A Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) in Manchester will determine if the doctor should be sanctioned or not.
During a period from April 4 2016 to May 16 2016, Dr Sylvester Nyatsuro was alleged to have mistreated nine patients with a total of 30 allegations made by the General Medical Council (GMC, an online list of doctors registered to practice in the UK) during his time at Willows Medical Centre. He was practicing in Nottingham at the time, and his primary medical qualification is from the University of Zimbabwe.
Willows Medical Centre, formerly on Church Street in Carlton, was repossessed in October 2016 after a healthcare assistant posed as a doctor and carried out internal examinations, with the CQC suspending services following an inspection earlier in the year because of how it was being run. It had 3,600 patients registered to a GP with just one full-time doctor and one GP locum.
READ MORE: Doctor alleged to have mistreated nine patients while in Nottingham
26 of the 30 allegations, also including inadequate record taking, were either admitted by Dr Nyatsuro or found proven by the tribunal. Four were found not to be proven by the tribunal, which were failing to make an adequate record of rationale for prescribing prochlorperazine (an anti-sickness medicine), Otomize (an ear spray), Lansoprazole (to lower stomach acid) and Zopiclone (medicine used for insomnia and sleeping problems).
After hearing from representatives of the GMC and Dr Nyatsuro, tribunal chair Andrew Lewis said: "The tribunal found that the record keeping failures and clinical failures resulted from the system that Dr Nyatsuro instigated when he employed Ms A (a healthcare assistant, HCA). The record keeping failures relate to the records made by Ms A, whom Dr Nyatsuro was responsible for supervising but failed to supervise so that she made inadequate records until the end of April 2016, before Dr Nyatsuro realised they were not adequate.
"Dr Nyatsuro's clinical failures also arise from the system of 'parallel clinics' which he instigated because that system resulted in him relying on the account of a patient given to him by Ms A, whose skills he had never assessed, and having insufficient time to make adequate examinations and assessments himself. The tribunal acknowledged that Dr Nyatsuro's failings arose in an exceptionally difficult situation in which there were staff shortages.
"The tribunal was impressed by Dr Nyatsuro's insight. He accepted his failures, the risk to which they gave rise and the damage to patient confidence.
"He explained where he had gone wrong and why it was important. He set out in appropriate detail how he should have acted to employ Ms A without giving rise to risks to patients and public confidence.
"The tribunal was encouraged by Dr Nyatsuro's efforts to gain insight and remediate his misconduct and it considered the risk of repetition to be low. However, it could not be fully assured that there was no risk of repetition because Dr Nyatsuro has not yet returned to work and been able to demonstrate the success of his remediation in a period of supervised practice.
"The tribunal found that, taken together, the way in which Ms A was employed and Dr Nyatsuro's own clinical failings, were sufficiently serious that public confidence would be undermined and the tribunal would be failing to promote and maintain proper standards for the profession if it did not making a finding of impairment. Therefore, the Tribunal found that Dr Nyatsuro's fitness to practise remains impaired by reason of his misconduct both because of the need to protect the public and in the wider public interest."
The tribunal is ongoing and is expected to conclude on Tuesday (July 12). The case continues.
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