Child Death Doctor Ruling Upheld

A doctor who sent home a schoolboy asthma sufferer who later died will have to serve a three-month suspension. Three appeal judges upheld a serious professional misconduct ruling against Dr Julie Mallon, from Stirlingshire.

The GP claimed the General Medical Council decision was unwarranted and the suspension was inappropriate. She was the on-call doctor at a health centre in Cumbernauld. She sent Owen Charleston, eight, home after treatment but his condition worsened and he died.

Owen had gone to Central Health Centre in 2002 with his mother to receive treatment for an asthma attack. He died less than two hours after a second visit to the surgery.

The youngster had a history of asthma and was discharged from hospital only a few days earlier following an attack. A GMC panel decided that her conduct “fell seriously short of the standards expected of a general medical practitioner”.

She was acquitted of the most serious aspects of the case against her – that she had caused or contributed to the death and given dishonest evidence to a  later fatal accident inquiry.

But the GMC panel held that she had failed to take a sufficiently detailed history. It also found that it was “inappropriate and irresponsible” to discuss with the boy’s mother the cost of nebulising masks – to help with his breathing – and to wait for a mask to be brought from home before starting the treatment.

Judges at the Court of Session in Edinburgh refused to overturn the decisions. The Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Gill, who heard the case with Lord Johnston and Lord Marnoch, said: “My own impression is that the finding of serious professional misconduct was amply justified.”

The judge said the GMC panel was best placed to make the judgement since the critical findings concerned technical questions of medical practice. “In my view it was open to the panel to conclude that, even after the graver elements were taken out of the charge, what remained nonetheless constituted serious professional misconduct,” he said. He added that he could not say the three-month suspension was unreasonable or excessive.

The doctor’s suspension had not been applied because of her appeal.