UPDATE: 12.09pm

AN EX-NEWPORT doctor still making 'serious errors' nearly seven years after she failed to spot a baby girl's fatal condition will remain under strict supervision for three more months to protect patients.

Her case was reviewed at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester this week, but the panel, chaired by Professor David Katz, ran out of time to make a ruling.

"The panel determined that the existing conditions on your registration must remain in place in order to protect patients and the public interest pending the completion of the case,' he said.

"The reconvened dates will be confirmed finally with the parties in due course.

The hearing will continue at a later date where the panel will decide if she can work freely without conditions.

 

A MEDICAL panel heard how a doctor is still making 'serious errors' nearly seven years after she failed to spot a Newport baby girl's fatal condition.

Dr Salawati Abdul-Salam allowed nine-month-old Aleesha Evans to be discharged from the Royal Gwent Hospital, after telling her parents to give her Calpol for a viral infection.

The little girl was suffering from blood poisoning and died the next day.

A year earlier Colin Perriam, 66, died after Dr Abdul-Salam analysed six-month old blood samples, then wrongly diagnosed a ruptured ulcer as constipation.

The medic was suspended for just four months in March 2010 then allowed to return to work under a range of conditions and has been subject to conditional registration ever since.

But she was allowed to continue her career in August 2010 under supervision at Ipswich Hospital, Suffolk, where she still works as a medium grade doctor in the A&E department.

Last October a panel flagged up a number of clinical errors made while she was working at the Ipswich Hospital but ruled she presented 'no undue risk to patients.'

At a review hearing at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester this week the panel was told of two more blunders over the past eight months.

One man suffered an accidental overdose of the painkiller Oramorph after Dr Abdul-Salam doubled his daily dose then sent him home without further advice, the hearing was told.

He was rushed to hospital by ambulance three days later after he was found “unrousable” with signs of respiratory depression.

“I now realise the advice to increase his frequency of Oramorph was not the best thing to give him at the time,” she added.

The most recent incident happened just two months ago in May when an 89-year-old woman was taken to hospital the day after a fall in her garden.

Dr Abdul-Salam discharged the patient and told her to take painkillers, but her injury was later found to be a fractured neck.

Her consultant supervisor, Dr David Hartin, told the panel he employed the doctor as the “lesser risk” than leaving the A&E department short-staffed.

Dr Hartin told the hearing that Dr Abdul-Salam did not make a greater number or more serious errors than any other doctor of a similar grade and experience in his department.

But Dr Abdul-Salam could now be allowed back to unrestricted practise if the panel decides she no longer requires close supervision.

The hearing continues.