Cleared of cheating… smitten doctors with identical exam papers
WHEN two lovestruck junior doctors began whispering while sitting an exam, suspicions were raised. Dr Ana Do Amaral seemed on the verge of tears, then her boyfriend Dr Joao Fernandes Pinheiro was allegedly seen pushing his answer sheet towards her.
Suspicions deepened as the pair were found to have given identical answers to all 120 questions about cardiac arrests – with the same 17 incorrect answers.
But incredibly the Portuguese pair, both 25, have been cleared of cheating in the exam they sat in the hope of working in the NHS.
A disciplinary panel said that, without analysis of the probability of giving the same answers by chance, it could not be sure of foul play. The couple – thought to have returned to Portugal – can still pursue medical careers in Britain.
The exam took place in December 2013 as the couple, who both went to medical school at Charles University in Prague, attended an advanced life- support course at North Middlesex Hospital, north London, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing was told.
But 20 minutes into the hour-long theory test, Dr Amaral caught the attention of Gary May, who helped run the course. Mr May told the hearing: ‘I noticed there seemed to be some whispering between them while sitting next to each other.
‘She looked very flustered, very red in the face and it looked as if he was about to burst into tears.’
He said Dr Pinheiro ‘slouched to the right and pushed his paper to the left’ towards Dr Amaral, adding: ‘That is when I thought he was trying to show his paper to the female doctor.’
Mr May said he stood in front of them so they knew he suspected cheating. ‘The female started looking towards the ceiling like she was trying to work things out and was
‘Precisely the same
wrong answers’
talking to herself and not to her colleague on her right,’ he said.
Mr May marked their papers together and found they both scored 86 per cent with the same answers.
They had initially denied cheating, but Mr May said, when challenged alone, Dr Pinheiro told him: ‘OK it was me. I asked her for some answers. She had nothing to do with it. She is innocent.’
Paul Ozin, for the General Medical Council, said: ‘In common sense there is a vanishingly small chance of both arriving at precisely the same wrong answers. It is cogent, compelling and overwhelming evidence of collusion.’
The doctors, who did not attend the hearing, denied the allegation in writing – with Dr Pinheiro claiming Mr May encouraged him to say he had copied, telling him that ‘nothing bad would happen to him’. But disci- plinary panel chairman Sandra Sturdy said that, while it accepted Mr May’s account, ‘it was not persuaded that his interpretation that the doctors were cheating was the only possible interpretation’.
The panel said it had not heard any evidence on the probability of the answers being the same and the whispering ‘may not have been with a view to colluding’. Dr Pinheiro’s confession ‘was not in itself evidence of collusion on both their parts’, it said. They were both cleared of misleading and dishonest behaviour.