{"id":91271,"date":"2025-08-25T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T09:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/91271\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T09:00:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T09:00:30","slug":"ipswich-hospital-dietitian-who-put-frail-patients-at-risk-banned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/91271\/","title":{"rendered":"Ipswich Hospital dietitian who put frail patients at risk banned"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>George King<\/p>\n<p>BBC News, Suffolk<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1755937268_113_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-d1200759-0 dkIvM hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/5f470770-6b9e-11ef-811b-09c4913a8684.png.webp.webp\" loading=\"eager\" alt=\"Google The outside of Ipswich Hospital - a large blue sign is in the foreground on a roundabout. The sign has a map of parking locations and information for patients. The hospital building is in the background and has a glass front with brick sides. \" class=\"sc-d1200759-0 dvfjxj\"\/>Google<\/p>\n<p>David Brown was working at Ipswich Hospital as a dietitian<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">A dietitian who exposed vulnerable and frail patients to &#8220;risk of harm&#8221; and lied about visiting a patient who had died nearly a month before has been struck off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">David Brown failed to maintain accurate records while working at Ipswich Hospital between May 2019 and April 2020, the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service (HCPT) said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">He had sole responsibility for carrying out home visits for cancer patients, working with those having radiotherapy, and people with motor neurone disease.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Mr Brown has now been banned from working as a healthcare professional after a panel ruled his actions amounted to misconduct and he presented an &#8220;unacceptable risk to future service users&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">&#8220;Practitioners and the public would be aghast were there to be no restriction imposed on a practitioner against whom such findings had been made,&#8221; the HCPT said.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1755937268_113_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-d1200759-0 dkIvM hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/5ed87ad0-8700-11ef-8c26-f76ffbea7663.png.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Google Maps The blue and white Ipswich Hospital sign against a backdrop of greenery, including trees and bushes\" class=\"sc-d1200759-0 dvfjxj\"\/>Google Maps<\/p>\n<p>Mr Brown said his job and personal life had &#8220;adversely affected his wellbeing&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Mr Brown was working with the East Suffolk and North East Essex Foundation Trust&#8217;s Oncology Dietetic Team, covering a period of secondment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">He failed to record full clinical information from his appointments with 18 service users and provide full clinical documentation about interventions with 14 patients.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">The HCTP report said he also did not review patients or complete their notes within a &#8220;timely manner&#8221;, on one occasion taking five months before recording a home visit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">On 21 February 2020, Mr Brown recorded that he had seen a patient in December 2019, even though he couldn&#8217;t have, as they had died the month before.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Neglectful&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">Mr Brown accepted his practice &#8220;had been below that required&#8221; and considered that he &#8220;should have made his recording keeping a higher priority&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">He said personal circumstances had &#8220;put him under pressure&#8221; and the impact of his work and his personal life had &#8220;adversely affected his wellbeing&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">But the panel decided his fitness to practise had been impaired and imposed a permanent ban, which comes into force from 5 September.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">&#8220;His lack of application to his role would be considered by fellow practitioners to have seriously undermined the collective responsibility of upholding and maintaining the standards of their profession,&#8221; the HCTP said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">&#8220;Similarly, it was decided the public would be concerned if a practitioner who had ignored the wellbeing of those under his care, and had been so neglectful of his responsibilities over such a long period of time, were to be allowed to continue in practice without some form of restriction on his practice.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George King BBC News, Suffolk Google David Brown was working at Ipswich Hospital as a dietitian A dietitian&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-91271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}