There are ‘fake’ doctors in the NHS, trust me
Dan Sefton tells Radhika Sanghani that he found inspiraton for his new BBC medical thriller on Britain’s hospital wards
When Dan Sefton was working in a London A&E ward in 2015, he heard about a fellow NHS doctor who had been outed as a fraud. “He’d been practicing successfully for a long time but was caught out on a paperwork technicality,” explains Sefton. “He didn’t have the right qualifications. It happens more than you’d think…”
The phenomenon intrigued Sefton and – two years after that fake doctor, Levon Mkhitarian, was jailed – the 45-year-old made it the centre of his new BBC drama, Trust Me. The four-part thriller, which started last week, stars Jodie Whittaker as a nurse who is sacked for whistleblowing and then steals the identity of her best friend: an A&E doctor. “I’ve always found it interesting,” says Sefton, who, while working as a medical registrar, wrote ITV’s The Good Karmaarma Hospital and Sky series Delicious. “I was looking for a fresh idea for a drama, and this came up. I’ve never seen it portrayed on TV before.”
It’s a case of life being stranger than fiction. People do get away with assuming false identities in medicine – and have done for centuries. Sefton mentions the case of Dr James Barry, a Victorian surgeon who saved numerous lives and was the first British doctor to perform a caesarean section. It was only following Barry’s death, after 46 years of practicing, that it was discovered that he was actually a she. Women weren’t legally allowed to enrol in medical school at that time, so Margaret Bulkley, a shopkeeper’s daughter, had stolen her uncle’s identity and lived her entire adult life posing as a male doctor.
It is a remarkable story, and not one limited to the 19th century. But often, says Sefton, it is less dangerous than one might assume. “Very few impostors are caught because they are terrible,” he says. “They’re caught through paperwork or bad luck. Some are actually very successful. Your first thought is that it’s risky, but actually they’re often more conscientious.”
The law, of course, doesn’t take this into account. Mkhitarian stole the identity of a real medic and convinced five NHS trusts, a charity and a private medical centre that h he was registered to practice. The med medical graduate from Georgia – w who was only qualified to wo work as a trainee – created a fict fictitious CV, bank statements an and even a letter purporting to be from a medical surgery. He waswa found out after trying to obtain a hospital security pass in the name of the genuine do doctor, and was handed a six-year prison sentenc sentence after pleading guilty t to 22 counts of fraud and deception. Oth Other such cases hav have seen “fake doc doctors” jailed for up t to five years, wh while some have bee been deported.
I In Trust Me, Whitta Whittaker’s transition from nu nurse to doctor is absolute absolutely plausible, says
Sefton. “The culture of medicine lets you join in, and junior doctors are expected to not know stuff. You’re constantly learning on the job. It’s very possible to fake it until you make it. On the flip side, there are bad doctors who are fully qualified but aren’t caught out straightaway. They are tolerated and worked around. I’ve been told to keep an eye on someone and watch what they’re doing, after it’s known they’ve made errors”.
Sefton, who lives in Somerset with wife Louise, a fellow doctor, and their three daughters, never expected to become a screenwriter. He studied medicine in the hope that five years at university would help him to figure out what he wanted to do. He began his career in the mid-Nineties, aged 23, but it was only aged 30, while working at University College Hospital, that he was inspired to take a screenwriting course, and realised he had a talent.
A conversation with a friend who worked on BBC soap Doctors saw him given the opportunity to write an episode. From there, his career took off, and he eventually decided to put medicine on hold. “I was in the right place at the right time,” he says. “My wife was really supportive, as she was the breadwinner for quite a long time. Now the roles are reserved, so it’s payback time. The great thing about still being a doctor is that I have never been as skint as most writers.”
After writing successfully for several years, Sefton decided to return to medicine part time, and now works on an A&E ward in Somerset. “I combine the two,” he says. “I don’t have any management responsibility
– I just do the pure job. It’s challenging, but you get to leave your work there when you go home.” It also gives him a unique insight into the human condition, something invaluable for screenwriting. Sefton admits: “As a doctor you get access to emotionally vulnerable people and they tell you things – you get an understanding of what humans are really like.”
He hopes Trust Me will offer a rare insight into the reality of an A&E ward and how doctors behave behind the scenes. “I think it’s close to the truth. If you want to know what it’s really like, watch.”