Ebola doctor suspended for only a month
A DOCTOR who lied about ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey was yesterday suspended for only one month by a watchdog.
Dr Hannah Ryan took the temperature of the Scots nurse as they waited to go through virus screening at Heathrow Airport, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service heard.
It showed Miss Cafferkey had a temperature of 38.2C (100.7F) – a warning sign of ebola, the disease that killed thousands in West Africa.
The two medics had gone there in 2014 as volunteers to help fight the outbreak.
When they returned to the UK on December 28, 2014, after two months away, the screening process by Public Health England (PHE) medics at Heathrow was ‘shambolic’, the hearing was earlier told.
Dr Ryan, 31, noted Miss Cafferkey’s high temperature. Instead of raising the alarm, Dr Ryan, in a state of ‘panic’ agreed a lower temperature of 37.2C (98.9F) was to be recorded on a screening form.
Miss Cafferkey was allowed to travel home to Cambuslang, Lanarkshire, carrying the conback, tagious virus and putting others at ‘unwarranted risk’.
She fell critically ill the next day but survived.
Dr Ryan admitted misleading other medics by means of the lower temperature being put on the form handed to the doctors screening at Heathrow.
Her behaviour was ‘deeply deplorable’, the tribunal ruled.
When PHE consultant Dr Nick Gent rang Dr Ryan on January 2, 2015, to investigate what had happened at the airport, she gave a ‘dishonest’ response to conceal her involvement in taking Miss Cafferkey’s temperature, describing it as ‘normal’.
Later that day she called him sounded ‘highly stressed’, and told him the truth.
Dr Ryan was described as an ‘exceptional young doctor’ who had volunteered to work in ‘horrendous’ conditions to help the sick and dying and had made a ‘one-off’ mistake under extreme fatigue and pressure.
The doctor told the hearing: ‘Pauline Cafferkey was my friend and I was really worried she might die.’
Dr Ryan, who works at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, admitted wrongdoing but denied her fitness to practise was impaired.
However, she was found guilty of serious misconduct after the nine-day hearing in Manchester.
Tribunal chairman Dr Bernard Herdan said: ‘Since the tribunal is satisfied the risk of repetition of your misconduct is low, and there is no risk to patient safety, a one-month suspension will be sufficient to mark the seriousness of your misconduct and to send a message to the profession that dishonesty by a doctor cannot be tolerated.’
Miss Cafferkey was earlier cleared by the Nursing and Midwifery Council on the grounds that her judgment at the airport had been so impaired by the developing illness that she could not be found guilty of misconduct.