A doctor who was jailed for assaults on police officers and nurses has had her suspension from the profession extended by six months.
Karen Clark, 41, turned to theft and violence after spiralling into alcoholism and has served two prison sentences.
On one occasion while off duty she violently assaulted four nurses after being taken to Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock for treatment.
She punched one nurse in the head, kicked another, dug her nails into the arm of a third and pushed a fourth.
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The hospital medic, who worked at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, also racked up convictions for attacking police officers, possessing cocaine and being found drunk behind the wheel of her car.
Dr Clark, from Kilwinning, Ayrshire, has been suspended from practising since 2016 by the Medical Practitioner Tribunal Service (MPTS) but launched a bid to return to the profession.
However, at a review hearing earlier this month the MPTS disciplinary panel decided her suspension should continue until at least November of this year.
Another review hearing will be heard towards the end of the latest suspension.
Helen Potts, the tribunal chairwoman, said: "The tribunal considered that its findings on impairment were so serious that action needed to be taken.
"Dr Clark's recent lack of engagement, along with her failure to provide the tribunal with evidence of remediation, led the tribunal to conclude that her behaviour had come perilously close to crossing the threshold of erasure.
"However, in light of the recent mitigation, the tribunal did not consider Dr Clark's behaviour to be fundamentally incompatible with continued registration at this point.
"In reaching this decision, the Tribunal took into account Dr Clark's own recognition that this may well be her final opportunity to
demonstrate remediation.
"Therefore, the tribunal considered that a period of suspension would meet the overarching objectives as it would protect patients and the public."
The hearing was told Dr Clark was making progress in her recovery but she acknowledged that her fitness to practice remained impaired.
In an email to the tribunal, she stated: "I sincerely hope that I will be granted another, even final, chance to demonstrate how much medicine is to me and that I will put my all into recovering and staying in recovery."
The medic has detailed her fight against booze addiction in a blog titled 'Karen Clark: a young female doctor shares her journey into recovery from addiction'.
Dr Clark was working as a senior registrar in the emergency department at Glasgow Royal Infirmary when her life began to spiral out of control.
She was jailed for a total of nine months at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court in April 2015.
The jail sentence was imposed after she admitted assaulting the four nurses and four police officers during separate incidents in July 2014. She also pled guilty to two counts of threatening and abusive behaviour in April 2014.
In November 2017 she was jailed for eight months for breaching community payback orders imposed for theft and housebreaking and a sheriff warned her she would end up dead if she didn't deal with her alcohol problem.
Dr Clark graduated in medicine from Dundee University in 2006 and has worked at a number of other NHS hospitals in Glasgow, Dumfries and Ayrshire during her career.
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