Dietitian who put frail patients at risk struck-off

David Brown was working at Ipswich Hospital as a dietitian

A dietitian who exposed vulnerable and frail patients to "risk of harm" and lied about visiting a patient who had died nearly a month before has been struck off.

David Brown failed to maintain accurate records while working at Ipswich Hospital between May 2019 and April 2020, the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service (HCPT) said.

He had sole responsibility for carrying out home visits for cancer patients, working with those having radiotherapy, and people with motor neurone disease.

Mr Brown has now been banned from working as a healthcare professional after a panel ruled his actions amounted to misconduct and he presented an "unacceptable risk to future service users".

"Practitioners and the public would be aghast were there to be no restriction imposed on a practitioner against whom such findings had been made," the HCPT said.

Mr Brown said his job and personal life had "adversely affected his wellbeing"

Mr Brown was working with the East Suffolk and North East Essex Foundation Trust's Oncology Dietetic Team, covering a period of secondment.

He failed to record full clinical information from his appointments with 18 service users and provide full clinical documentation about interventions with 14 patients.

The HCTP report said he also did not review patients or complete their notes within a "timely manner", on one occasion taking five months before recording a home visit.

On 21 February 2020, Mr Brown recorded that he had seen a patient in December 2019, even though he couldn't have, as they had died the month before.

'Neglectful'

Mr Brown accepted his practice "had been below that required" and considered that he "should have made his recording keeping a higher priority".

He said personal circumstances had "put him under pressure" and the impact of his work and his personal life had "adversely affected his wellbeing".

But the panel decided his fitness to practise had been impaired and imposed a permanent ban, which comes into force from 5 September.

"His lack of application to his role would be considered by fellow practitioners to have seriously undermined the collective responsibility of upholding and maintaining the standards of their profession," the HCTP said.

"Similarly, it was decided the public would be concerned if a practitioner who had ignored the wellbeing of those under his care, and had been so neglectful of his responsibilities over such a long period of time, were to be allowed to continue in practice without some form of restriction on his practice."