High Court quashes misconduct finding

A decision of the Medical Council and its fitness to practise committee that a doctor was guilty of professional misconduct has been quashed by the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns.

He said that while Dr Samuel McManus had accepted responsibility for wrongly altering a patient’s medical notes while a senior house officer in the Mater Hospital in Dublin, he had not been afforded fair procedures during an inquiry.

Mr Justice Kearns said the importance of adhering scrupulously to the requirements of fair procedures was central to the proper conduct of disciplinary processes which might result in serious sanctions for the person concerned.

He said the inquiry was a matter of the utmost gravity to Dr McManus, a doctor with a hitherto unblemished record and the imposition of any finding of professional misconduct or sanction with its attendant adverse career consequences could be justified only under scrupulously fair procedures.

Judge Kearns, in a reserved judgment, said that in Apr 2008 an African man had been found hanging in the Mater Hospital and died a fortnight later. He had earlier attempted to commit suicide near the River Liffey.

The judge said that Dr McManus, aged 32, had accepted he altered clinical notes of the patient following the suicide attempt in the hospital.

The fitness to practise committee had recommended a sanction of admonishment in a report following an inquiry but the Medical Council had imposed the lesser sanction of “advice”.

Judge Kearns said that at the end of the day the plain fact of the matter was that Dr McManus had altered medical records and had further accepted the changing of notes was inappropriate.

He said that however inconvenient and burdensome it may be to write up medical records accurately, such records constituted a vital safeguard for both medical practitioners and patients alike.

He quashed all decisions that had been reached by both the council and its fitness to practise committee.