A Bristol doctor who was found guilty of drinking and driving has been suspended from practicing for a year for failing to declare his conviction. Dr David Adams pleaded guilty at Bristol Magistrates' Court to driving two times over the legal alcohol limit in September 2019, and was sentenced to a fine of £440 and disqualified from holding or obtaining a drive licence for 17 months.
Adams worked as a doctor in Bristol from 2006 until 2014, but he has now been suspended for 12 months following a General Medical Council tribunal. The tribunal found that he had failed to declare this conviction when he applied to be restored to the medical register on December 17, 2019 after his name was struck off in 2015 when he stopped paying the annual fee.
It found that Adams was 'dishonest' in his failure to declare this, with the GMC only becoming aware of his conviction in April 2020 when an anonymous complainant came forward. Adams claimed in an email to the GMC on June 16, 2020, that he thought that he did not need to declare his conviction when filling out the application because drink-driving was not one of the 'listed offences' which the application form guidance said a prospective doctor should mention.
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But he says that he did not realise that a certain amount of time needs to pass before you don't have to mention an offence, while his conviction was recent. "I confirm that I completely accept that the content was my responsibility," he said.
But the panel found that there were inconsistencies in his testimony, as he had previously said that he did not access the guidance, and then went on to say he had accessed it but not understood it. "The contradictions in his position together with the multiplicity and partial inconsistency of the accounts given by Dr Adams to justify his belief, the Tribunal considered undermined the credibility of his position," a report on the hearing said.
Adams admitted to his mistake in an email to the GMC in June 2020 which said: "I admit, and am very sorry for, failing to inform the GMC of a conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol last year when I applied for registration." The lawyer acting on behalf of the GMC asked for Adams to be struck from the register, suggested that he had acted in a "planned and premeditated" way which would have succeeded if not for the anonymous complaint made against him.
But the tribunal chose to suspend him from the register for 12 months, noting that his dishonesty "was not persistent" and that there was no evidence to suggest he had no insight into his own behaviour. Although the panel found that he knew he should have declared his conviction and that "there was a failure on his part not to do", it noted that the incident was "a single episode of dishonesty in an otherwise unblemished career of more than 30 years".
