A HOSPITAL in Kilkenny took on a junior doctor who wasn’t registered with the Medical Council last year because it was under pressure to fill vacancies, it has emerged.
A Medical Council inquiry into the fitness to practise of the doctor also heard yesterday that he had been hired to work in St Luke’s Hospital without the hospital checking his references. He had been hired through a recruitment company.
The chairman of the inquiry, Prof Jim Slevin, expressed serious concern that the hospital allowed Dr Emmanuel Ogwu from Nigeria to practise without being registered and noted the HSE made “no apparent attempt” to validate the references provided by him.
Dan McCarthy, a medical manpower manager with the HSE, told the inquiry the hospital relied on the recruitment company Global Medic to have all documentation in place for the doctor, including reference checks.
He said the hospital was “under pressure” to fill its surgical senior house officer posts in June 2009 when it offered Dr Ogwu a contract. He signed the contract on June 30th, 2009 and he began work in July 2009. It was the first time, Mr McCarthy said, that a doctor was taken on in one of his hospitals without being registered. “It was an oversight . . . we were very stretched staff wise . . . it shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
On August 5th, 2009, five weeks after Dr Ogwu started work, the hospital noticed there were still 10 items missing from his file, including a work permit, Medical Council registration, an international police clearance certificate and Garda vetting form.
Mr McCarthy, when questioned about this by the fitness to practise committee, admitted they were key documents and what had happened was not acceptable.
This was the first time a doctor began work in the hospital without being registered, he said. The doctor was taken off duty in August 2009 and subsequently handed in his resignation.
Dr Ogwu was before the fitness to practise committee facing three allegations of professional misconduct. These revolved around practising without being registered and falsely claiming in his CV that he had worked for three years as a surgical senior house officer in Nigeria between January 2005 and December 2007, when in fact two of those years were taken as a sabbatical, part of which was spent in Ireland.
David Leonard, for the doctor, said his client admitted he was not registered when he began work but submitted an application for registration which wasn’t received by the Medical Council. He also said the doctor had made “an honest mistake” on his CV in relation to surgical experience. He said a separate part of the CV would have made it clear to anyone reading it that he spent part of the period in question sitting exams and gaining experience in Ireland.
But JP McDowell, solicitor for the Medical Council, said previous CVs submitted by the doctor to Beaumont Hospital and St Patrick’s Hospital in Dublin differed from the one he submitted to St Luke’s. He also said the fitness to practise committee had to take into account that he would be paid more if he had more surgical experience and that “serious repercussions” could result from a consultant making decisions about the doctor’s roles and responsibilities based on the experience he stated he had.
The committee found Dr Ogwu guilty of professional misconduct on just one charge, that he misrepresented his experience on his CV, and ordered that he be admonished for doing so.