Telegraph and Argus
September 6, 2014
A CATALOGUE of failings by a Bradford GP which put both patients and health service staff at risk has been struck off by a medical tribunal.
Dr Sirajam Haque did not attend the hearing and unless he appeals within 28 days, the ruling will become permanent.
Action against Dr Haque, who worked at the Primrose Surgery in Butler Street West, Wapping, was brought by the General Medical Council after it was alerted by a whistle-blower at the same surgery.
The GMC investigation resulted in Dr Haque being referred to a Medical Practitioners Tribunal panel, which decided there was no real prospect of the doctor taking action to bring his skills up to standard.
Panel Chairman Professor Michael Whitehouse said: “His deficient performance spans the whole spectrum of the knowledge and skills required of a general practitioner.”
Errors made by Dr Haque included failing to tell a district nurse a patient had Hepatitis B, a condition which puts health workers at serious risk and prescribing the contraceptive pill to a woman who was trying to conceive.
On another occasion he conducted a chest examination on a patient with diarrhoea and also prescribed oral steroids to a patient with a skin infection although the treatment could have caused the condition to spread.
He gave incorrect advice to a patient diagnosed with genital herpes and made an inadequate examination of another with persistent headaches.
In a simulated surgery test, the doctor scored 27.5 per cent when the minimum acceptable standard was 50 per cent. In a ‘core knowledge’ test for family doctors, he scored 42.5 per cent, against the acceptable minimum of 63.26 per cent.
A team who assessed him under the GMC investigation concluded unanimously that he was “no fit to practice medicine and there are no reasonable prospects for successful remediation”.
Prof Whitehouse said there was “an abundance of evidence” that Dr Haque’s fitness to practice was impaired and said: “The standard of his professional performance was deficient in all tested areas of clinical practice.