The High Court has upheld conditions imposed on radiologist Dawar Siddiqi’s continued medical registration after finding that the Medical Council proved poor professional performance in his reporting of CT scans at Bantry General Hospital in 2013.
In a judgment delivered on 31 May 2019, Ms Justice Creedon rejected Mr Siddiqi’s application to cancel the Council’s decision of 23 March 2016. The appeal concerned the registration conditions only. A separate sanction advising him about his professional performance was outside the relief he sought.
Mr Siddiqi worked as a locum consultant radiologist at Bantry from May to September 2013. After a complaint and investigation, the Council’s Fitness to Practise Committee found that an allegation of poor professional performance was proven in 11 of 22 cases it considered. The High Court hearing took place over 13 days between November 2017 and June 2018.
The court reviewed 19 cases that remained in issue in the appeal. The Council’s expert, Dr Peter Ellis, considered eight reports serious errors in their own right and the remaining 11 mild or moderate errors that amounted to a serious error when considered as a pattern. The court preferred Dr Ellis’s evidence where the experts disagreed. It accepted that five cases were serious errors in both experts’ views, and that six further cases were serious when considered collectively, alongside Dr Ellis’s broader assessment.
Mr Siddiqi pointed to the conditions in which he worked, including the absence of the PACS imaging system, workload and limited clinical governance. The court acknowledged the evidence about those circumstances but found they did not excuse the seriousness of the reporting discrepancies. It also rejected his contention that the audit sample was not random, finding no evidence to support it.
The court concluded that the Council had established beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Siddiqi was guilty of poor professional performance under the Medical Practitioners Act 2007, as interpreted in the Supreme Court’s Corbally decision. It then considered the sanction and found the conditions reasonable and proportionate in the circumstances.
The conditions require a professional development plan addressing CT reporting, regular meetings with a Council-approved nominated person, progress reporting and evidence of compliance when requested. They also require Mr Siddiqi to meet the costs of implementation and remain in place for at least two years. The High Court did not cancel or replace the Council’s decision.