{"id":179906,"date":"2025-09-30T11:42:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T11:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/179906\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T11:42:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T11:42:08","slug":"doctor-who-wrote-inappropriate-prescription-for-friend-consents-to-being-censured-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/179906\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor who wrote inappropriate prescription for friend consents to being censured \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">A doctor who wrote an inappropriate prescription for a friend on a pad belonging to a hospital he no longer worked for has consented, before a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/medical-council\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/medical-council\/\">Medical Council<\/a> fitness-to-practise inquiry, to be censured. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The doctor also agreed to not repeat the conduct which was the subject of the complaint and to complete a prescribing course before returning to practise medicine. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The inquiry on Monday heard that on September 29th, 2021 the doctor wrote a prescription for his friend, witness A, who was staying with him at the time, for 28 tablets ofpainkiller OxyNorm. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">OxyNorm contains oxycodone, a controlled drug. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Witness A said in her statement to the inquiry that she suffered from erosive esophagitis. She said that on the date in question she could not stand up straight due to the pain and asked the doctor to treat it. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Erosive oesophagitis occurs when there is damage to the tissue lining of the oesophagus. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Witness A said she had previously been prescribed OxyNorm in her home country of Nigeria. She said she had last been there in December 2020, that her medication had run out and paracetamol was not working. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">While the pain subsided after the doctor wrote the prescription, witness A subsequently attended a pharmacy in Limerick on October 8th, 2021.. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Donna Downey, who was working as a support pharmacist,  noticed the watermark of the prescription paper indicated it was not for MDA (Misuse of Drugs Act) drugs. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The paper used was also the headed prescription paper of the department of psychiatry at St Luke\u2019s General Hospital, Kilkenny. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Ms Downey contacted St Luke\u2019s on October 9th and established that witness A had never been a patient there and that the doctor had not worked there for more than a year. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Louisa Power, chief pharmacist for the Limerick region, subsequently made a complaint to the Irish Medical Council (IMC). <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The inquiry heard that the doctor, in correspondence via his solicitors, Berwick Solicitors, on December 8th, 2021 admitted that he had written the prescription on a pad from St Luke\u2019s. He said there were \u201cspecial\u201d reasons for doing so, including that witness A was a family friend and in \u201csevere pain\u201d. He accepted that this was improper. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Fiona Fenton, a consultant psychiatrist in substance misuse, prepared two reports for the IMC  over the doctor\u2019s conduct and her assessment as to whether it amounted to professional misconduct and poor professional performance. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Ms Fenton said there was a risk of abuse of OxyNorm in that it can induce dependency and be addictive. However, she agreed with the doctor\u2019s solicitor, David Higgins, that the lapse of one week from the date on which the prescription was written to when witness A sought to get the drug was not normal practice if she was addicted to an opiate. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Ms Fenton found that a number of the allegations against the doctor, such as writing a prescription for a controlled drug on the prescription paper of a hospital in which he was no longer employed, constituted professional misconduct but did not constitute poor professional performance. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">For the latter allegation to be proven, she felt it needed to be shown that, as well as other factors, the conduct of the doctor caused damage to the patient, which was not the case here. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The doctor, who has not practised since 2021, was keen to complete the prescribing course as soon as possible. The complaint against him is preventing him from practising medicine in the country where he currently resides. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">His identity was anonymised for the inquiry, as was that of witness A, to avoid jigsaw identification of the doctor. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The committee will, in due course, compose a report of the inquiry, including the undertaking consented to by the doctor, which will be forwarded to the council. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A doctor who wrote an inappropriate prescription for a friend on a pad belonging to a hospital he&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[64,63,137,115799,490],"class_list":{"0":"post-179906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-medical-council","12":"tag-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}