Derriford faces doctor's claim of discrimination

DOCTOR CLAIMS THAT SHE WAS A SCAPEGOAT FOR 'NEAR MISS' INCIDENT

- WILLIAM TELFORD

DERRIFORD Hospital is involved in a long-running legal dispute with one of its own doctors, after a patient had an adverse reaction to a drug and needed to be resuscitated.

Dr Esha Sarkar, who is Indian and disabled with cerebral palsy, claims she has been made a scapegoat for the “near miss” incident and a white male doctor has not been investigated.

Dr Sarkar, who still works at the hospital as a specialist registrar trainee in immunology, has made a complaint of disability and/or race discrimination. In a record of a preliminary hearing she alleged investigations into the clinical incident unfairly centred on her, and her role in giving a patient a steroid injection which caused life-threatening anaphylaxis, and not another doctor present: consultant immunologist Dr Andrew Whyte.

Dr Sarkar, who remains on Derriford’s books but performs limited or no clinical roles, claimed Dr Whyte, a non-disabled white doctor, was responsible for “250 incorrect blood test results being reported by the laboratory in 2016 as a locum consultant”. In tribunal documents she blamed Dr Whyte for the patient’s anaphylaxis in 2017 and claimed he is “an ongoing risk to patient safety.”

Dr Sarkar said the hospital “refuses to investigate alleged clinical negligence against Dr Whyte”. An employment tribunal will examine Dr Sarkar’s claim that she was subjected to a “high-level external investigation” but there was no probe into Dr Whyte “or any other able-bodied white doctor” and that she was not allowed to defend herself properly.