A Nigerian doctor of the accident and emergency unit in the UK has been delisted from the UK medical register after he used hospital records to trace two female patients and had s-exual relations with them.
A Medical Practitioners Tribunal was told that Dr.Christopher Uzodike, who worked at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital collected the phone numbers of two patients from the hospital records after they had visited the A&E department in 2016 and had s-exual relations with them.
The Tribunal also heard that Dr. Uzodike had s-exual relations with the women.
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal found that many of the allegations made against Dr. Uzodike were proved and concluded that his actions were “s-exually motivated” and “planned, repeated and sustained”.
A report of the tribunal said:
“The tribunal has found proved that Dr Uzodike had s-exual intercourse with both Patient A and Patient B, therefore, it determined that his actions in taking their numbers from the medical records were s-exually motivated.”
According to reports, Dr. Uzodike met patient A when she attended A&E in June 2016 and contacted her via WhatsApp later that evening.
The tribunal found out that he engaged in an ’emotional and s-exual relationship with patient A until April 2018.’
In September 2016, after patient B attended A&E, he sent her a text message, telling her he could not let her “curves walk past.” He later met her for a drink and they had s-ex.
The panel noted he was of previous good character and had attended a ‘maintaining professional boundaries course’, however, Ms. Kathryn Johnson, counsel for the General Medical Council, said she felt there remained a risk of repetition
Making a statement to the tribunal on July 6, 2020, Dr Uzodike said:
“Life is all about choices and regrettably, these were the bad choices that I made. I feel ashamed of my behaviour and how I let this happen.
”I have let so many people down, I let the patients down, I lost the confidence of the public in the profession, I let my hardworking colleagues down.
“I deeply regret what I did, and I am extremely remorseful. I cannot turn the hand of time, but I have taken steps and will continue to do so to make sure that the risk of a future occurrence is eliminated.”
According to his counsel, Lee Gledhill, the erasure would be ‘inappropriate and have a disproportionate financial impact on the doctor and his family.
However, the panel ruled:
‘A lesser sanction than erasure would not sufficiently protect the public, maintain public confidence in the profession and uphold proper professional standards for members of the profession.
‘The Tribunal took the view that both patients’ motives were similar in that they both wanted to make sure that Dr Uzodike was prevented from acting in the future in the same way that had been alleged.
‘The Tribunal also took into account Patient B’s evidence about her now working in the NHS and the importance of protecting patients.’