A married family GP has been banned from practising after he was accused of repeatedly asking a patient out on a date, a medical tribunal has heard.
Dr Chika Mbah, 37, sent WhatsApp messages to the tee-total patient asking her out for a drink, to which she declined. After signing her off work for a stress-related condition, he then turned up at the home of the woman, who was also grieving for the loss of her grandfather.
Father-of-two Mbah called himself ‘Dr Sandy’ and repeatedly called and texted her with messages such as ‘How are you stranger? – don’t you remember, it’s me, Dr Sandy?’ The attention became so bad the woman refused to attend doctor’s appointments with him, despite the pain caused by her recent diagnosis of Crohn’s disease.
Mbah had only qualified as a GP the previous year and was working as a locum GP in the Lister House Surgery, in Hatfield, when he pursued the woman, known only as Patient A, in July 2015.
Patient A said: ‘There was nothing wrong with the first appointment but a couple of days after the first appointment he messaged me. ‘It was just a normal chit chat just asking normal questions like “how are you” and “what are you doing today”. ‘It was nothing sexual or misleading. I received the odd phone call from him, this was only two or three times.
‘Most of the contact was over WhatsApp messages, he was checking how I was. Then the odd time it would be “do you want to go for a drink?”.’ Patient A also said he turned up at her mother’s house late at night and he told her about his wife and children.
She added: ‘He told me not to tell anyone about his messages because he might lose his job.’ The woman initially did not report the doctor but after confiding in her friend, she filed a complaint to the General Medical Council. She added: ‘At the time, I was very vulnerable and at the time I did not believe that it was serious. But now as I look back at it I realise that it was serious.
‘I just know that there are other vulnerable girls out there and I do not want this to happen to anyone else. When I needed treatment, I had to go without care because I did not want go see him. ‘He knows that everything I am saying is 100% the truth. He fully knows that told me not to tell anyone about what had happened.’ Mbah has been suspended from practising medicine for three months after being found guilty of misconduct and admitting to pursuing an improper relationship with the patient.
He denied illicitly accessing her medical records, instead saying that she gave him her number, although he could ‘not recall’ how the conversation about this came about. Panel chairman Alice Moller said: ‘The Tribunal acknowledged there was no evidence of Dr Mbah pursuing a sexual relationship and similarly, there was no evidence of any predatory behaviour but it considered his misconduct had the potential to cause harm to patients.’ She added it was ‘unlikely he would do it again.’
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Metro.co.uk
