Cultural Enrichment in the National Health Service

• Muslim doctor banned for 12 months for indecently touching nursing assistants in Liverpool:

A MERSEYSIDE doctor who indecently touched nursing assistants at the hospital he worked has been banned from practising for 12 months.

Dr Waqar Azim also abused his position as a gastroenterologist at Fazakerley hospital by making sexual remarks to the women, the General Medical Council (GMC) heard.

Dr Azim, who moved jobs after the women involved made complaints, now works for the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.

The fitness to practise panel, sitting in Manchester, found the incidents “inexcusable and distasteful”, but added Dr Azim did not pose a risk to patients and took into account 50 positive testimonials from colleagues.

The hearing involved five nursing assistants who worked with Dr Azim for up to three years between 2005 and March last year.

The panel heard he touched three of the women’s breasts and also checked the groin of one of them, known as Ms D, when she asked him about some lumps on her neck.

He also made an inappropriate comment to another, Ms E, about the “warmth of your underneath when you sat on my knee at the Christmas party”.

Dr Azim denied the allegations, but the panel said his evidence during the hearing was at times “unreliable” and “evasive”.

The panel also heard how his present employer, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, carried out a risk assessment before he took up his post there, concluding it was safe to employ him.

There had been no problems with female staff at that hospital.

The panel concluded Dr Azim’s conduct was “not fundamentally incompatible with your continuing to be a registered medical practitioner”.

But it added it viewed the misconduct as “very serious” and suspended him for the maximum 12-month period.

A spokesman for Aintree University Hospitals Trust, which runs the Fazakerley site, said: “We believe this ruling sends a strong message such behaviour will not be tolerated.

“A disciplinary process was previously started by the trust in relation to these allegations.

“Dr Azim resigned from his post with the trust during that process and is no longer employed by us.”

• A male nurse is accused of forcing a paranoid schizophrenic to eat his own faeces:

A NURSE has been accused of forcing a paranoid schizophrenic to eat his own excrement.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council heard Abraham Olaniyan told the man, known as Patient A, “you will eat your crap” after he soiled himself.

But Mr Olaniyan, from Brockley, told the hearing on August 7 his colleague Enock Mhindurwa was responsible.

The incident allegedly happened when 45-year-old Olaniyan was working a night shift at the Cygnet Wing secure psychiatric unit in Blackheath on July 16, 2004.

Mr Olaniyan told the hearing: “Patient A had made a mess on the floor and I went to get some gloves to clean it up.

“I was disposing of the faeces in the staff toilet when I heard a scream.”

He claimed Patient A told him Mr Mhindurwa had put excrement in his mouth.

Mr Olaniyan said: “The patient was calm, he was not annoyed. I looked in his mouth and I could not see anything.”

He added: “I was not even there when this incident took place. I was getting the gloves.

“I did not do it. The allegations are not true.’”

Patient A, who is sectioned under the Mental Health Act, gave evidence on August 6 but said he could not remember the incident well and could not say who was responsible.

Olaniyan denies threatening to make Patient A eat his own faeces and forcing him to eat them.

He also denies his fitness to practise is impaired.

• A male nurse tried to sedate a male patient with strong painkillers before groping his genitals:

A patient who suspected a nurse of trying to drug him in order to steal his belongings caught the medic groping him, a hearing was told this week.

The patient, a man in his 30s, punched Francis Ryan Amparo in the face after he discovered the male nurse touching his genitals, it is alleged.

Mr Amparo, of Garratt Lane, Tooting, plied the patient with drugs before trying to grope him once he was asleep, a misconduct hearing heard on Monday, August 10.

He is accused of maladministering two strong prescription drugs - codeine and morphine.

The victim, known only as Patient A, had been admitted to Royal Gwent Hospital on September 12, 2007, with kidney failure.

Patient A told the Nursing and Midwifery Council he became suspicious on September 16 after the nurse, Mr Amparo, repeatedly offered him powerful painkillers despite him not requesting them.

Such was his concern that he pretended to swallow the drugs but hid them under his pillow and positioned himself to catch the nurse.

He told the hearing: “I woke up several times that evening with him near my bed.

"I was convinced he was trying to steal my belongings so I turned on to my side, facing the window, and covered my face with a pillow.

“The next time was at about 2.30am.

"He stood in the doorway, then stood near the bed.

"He couldn’t see my face but I could see his in the reflection.

"He slowly pulled the blankets back and took the pillow away from my face to see if I was asleep.

“He lifted the waistband of my tracksuit and his hand went straight down on my groin area.

"I waited, then turned around and punched him in the face and ran out of the room.”

The on-call physician at the time, Dr Mohammed Abdulla, told the hearing he was “led to believe that patient A was in significant pain” after talking to Mr Amparo, but official records showed Patient A had been given the drugs before they had been prescribed.

Mr Amparo, 33, who was absent from the hearing, said in written testimony that he thought Patient A was cold and was trying to “untangle” his blankets.

• A healthcare worker suffering from both HIV and Hepatitis C is believed to have infected several patients in South London:

PATIENTS treated by a healthcare worker with hepatitis C have tested positive for the virus.

Around 9,000 patients were invited to take a test in April after the Lewisham healthcare worker was found to have both HIV and hepatitis C last year.

Just over a third came in for tests, and the trust confirmed on Tuesday that “fewer than 10 individuals” had tested positive for hepatitis C.

Donal O’Sullivan, NHS Lewisham consultant in public health medicine, said: “Investigations are continuing as to how a small number of individuals who have tested positive for hepatitis C might have acquired their infection.

“Some of those tested were already known to be positive for reasons other than contact with the healthcare worker involved, others too might have acquired the infection by other means.

“We cannot say definitively that infection has occurred in any patient because of contact with this healthcare worker.

“Any risk to patients is low, but anybody who has received a letter from NHS Lewisham recommending that they have a test for hepatitis C, and who has not yet had a test, should discuss this with their GP.”

The NHS Lewisham employee, who has not been named, is no longer working for the trust.

Hepatitis C is an inflammation of the liver and is spread through blood contact.