A doctor who did not inform his employer of conditions attaching to his registration and who did not have adequate professional indemnity cover has been found guilty of professional misconduct.
Dr Eltayeb Elkhabir, a Sudanese national, was found by a Medical Council fitness-to-practise committee not to have informed his employer of conditions attaching to his registration before commencing his employment with Medix Clinic in Sandyford, Dublin, while employed there between December 19th, 2022, and January 6th, 2023.
This obligation was placed upon Dr Elkhabir by way of a High Court order dated November 27th, 2013.
The committee also found that Dr Elkhabir practised medicine at the Medix Clinic without the appropriate level of professional indemnity cover in place.
READ MORE
The committee further found that Dr Elkhabir practised at the MyDocs surgeries in Newbridge and Naas without such cover.
Marie Culliton, chair of the fitness-to-practise panel, said the committee found that the doctor’s behaviour in not informing an employer of conditions attaching to his registration and not having adequate professional indemnity cover amounted to professional misconduct.
Ms Culliton said the committee had found proven that the doctor’s behaviour amounted to conduct which doctors of experience, competence and good repute consider disgraceful or dishonourable.
She said a statement by Dr El Sayed Higazy of the Medix Clinic was admitted to evidence, in which Dr Higazy said that he was not aware, prior to employing Dr Elkhabir as locum cover, that conditions were attached to his registration.
Regarding indemnity cover, Ms Culliton said the committee found that Dr Elkhabir knew of the obligation on him to have it, citing a submission to proceedings in which he said he had been trying to source such cover.
Ms Culliton said the reason it is mandatory to have private professional indemnity cover if the practitioner is working outside the public health system is for the protection of the public. “That they [the public] have an avenue of compensation if they suffer harm or injury because of negligence on the part of the doctor,” she added.
The committee found the failure to comply with the obligation to have adequate professional indemnity cover amounted to disgraceful and dishonourable conduct.
At the hearing earlier this month Dr Elkhabir, who represented himself, denied that the allegations against him amounted to professional misconduct.
Dr Elkhabir told the inquiry that previous inquiries by the Medical Council into his behaviour related to him talking in hospitals about his Muslim faith. “The way I dealt with patients was unprofessional. For example I spoke telling my religious views regarding a medical condition, that was not right,” he told barrister Eoghan O’Sullivan for the chief executive of the Medical Council.
The 2013 order of the High Court followed a fitness-to-practise inquiry in 2012 where Dr Elkhabir was found guilty of professional misconduct for behaviour which included making inappropriate comments to a patient – for which the Medical Council decided to remove him from the register.
In the High Court, where Dr Elkhabir sought to appeal that decision of the Medical Council, both he and the professional regulatory authority agreed that this decision would be set aside and that Dr Elkhabir would be censured.
The committee’s report will be submitted to the Medical Council, which will decide the appropriate sanction.
