Gynaecologist struck off over force used at birth

A retired gynaecologist found to have used undue force in delivering three babies has been struck off by the UK's General Medical Council.

Dr Janusz Wszeborowski, 67, of Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, was found guilty of serious professional misconduct.

The hearing heard how one of the babies was born with his head swollen to twice its normal size, with a black eye and a cut to his ear. The doctor was said to have pulled so hard with forceps that he dragged the mother on the bed across the hospital floor.

The GMC's professional conduct committee also found that Dr Wszeborowski caused patients pain and treated them in an inappropriate and insensitive manner.

Committee chairwoman Mrs Mary Clark-Glass told him: "It is in the public interest and necessary for the protection of parents that they direct the registrar to erase your name from the register."

She told him at the hearing in London: "The committee are deeply concerned by the facts of this case. You acted inappropriately and with gross insensitivity when providing treatment to three women during childbirth and when carrying out a vaginal examination on a fourth patient.

"A fifth patient was considerably distressed by your inappropriate and insensitive use of a mobile phone in her presence."

The doctor saw the women at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead, between 1992 and 1996.

The committee found that the doctor pulled on the forceps with undue force while delivering three babies. In those three cases, and two others, relating to examinations, he was found to have used inappropriate and insensitive treatment.

He was also cleared of slapping the thigh of two of the women.