Doctor was "dishonest" in screening nurse who had Ebola, tribunal finds

A doctor acted dishonestly when she lied to investigators about the dangerously high temperature of a nurse who went on to develop Ebola, a tribunal has found.

Dr Hannah Ryan, who had been working in Sierra Leone during the west Africa Ebola outbreak of 2014, was one of the medics who assessed Pauline Cafferkey following the Scottish nurse’s return to the UK in December 2014.

Ryan did not raise the alarm when a colleague wrote down Cafferkey’s temperature as 1C lower than it actually was during a “chaotic” screening process at Heathrow airport on 28 December 2014, a medical practitioners tribunal found on Monday.

A raised temperature can be the first sign of Ebola, which can kill within five days. Cafferkey, who twice nearly died from the virus, went on to develop one of the worst cases on record for people treated in the west.

During screening at Heathrow, Cafferkey insisted she was feeling fine and was eventually allowed to catch her connecting flight to Glasgow. The following day, she developed further Ebola symptoms and was admitted to hospital for urgent treatment.

The tribunal found that Ryan had acted in a “misleading” manner when she agreed that the form recording the lower, wrong temperature be submitted to screening staff from Public Health England (PHE) at the airport.

But Ryan, who had only just graduated from medical school, did not intend to conceal Cafferkey’s real temperature at the airport, knowing it to be at least 38.2C – higher than the 37.5 considered normal – the panel found.

However, the tribunal decided that the doctor had later been “dishonest” when she concealed her role in taking Cafferkey’s temperature during a conversation with Dr Nick Gent on 2 January 2015. Gent, deputy head of the emergency response department at PHE, had phoned her during PHE’s investigation into when Cafferkey’s symptoms first emerged.

Ryan did not tell him she had taken Cafferkey’s temperature and told him words to the effect that the nurse’s temperature was “normal”, the panel found.

The tribunal heard that Ryan and Cafferkey were one group among many British medics who put their own lives at risk by volunteering their medical skills and going to west Africa to help fight the outbreak.

Deployed on 22 November 2014, they were based at an 80-bed treatment centre in Kerry Town, a village in Sierra Leone, working “tirelessly in dangerous and highly pressurised conditions” during which they “formed a strong bond of friendship”, according to Fraser Coxhill, representing the General Medical Council.

The medical practitioners tribunal, which is independent of the GMC, will decide later this week whether Ryan’s fitness to practice as a doctor was impaired due to her actions and whether to impose sanctions.

Doctor was "dishonest" in screening nurse who had Ebola, tribunal finds