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 he was a senior house officer in the Mater hospital in Dublin, he had not been afforded fair procedures during an inquiry.
He said the importance of adhering scrupulously to the requirements of fair procedures was central to the proper conduct of disciplinary processes. 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 misconduct or sanction with all its attendant adverse career consequences could be justified only under scrupulously fair procedures.