Doctor struck off after trying to cover up his failure to spot deadly infection

Allen Demanya was working at Royal Glamorgan Hospital in Wales when one of his patients died

An NHS doctor who failed to diagnose an A&E patient’s sepsis and tried to cover his tracks after she died has been barred from his profession.

Allen Demanya was working a night shift at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital in Pontyclun, Wales, in 2019, when the patient – a 75-year-old woman – was admitted at 1.51am.

Around 20 minutes later, the nurse who triaged her recorded symptoms of high temperature, high heart rate, low blood pressure and diarrhoea and made a note of ‘possible sepsis’, a tribunal heard.

At 3am, Dr Demanya examined the woman – known only as Patient A – and put in place a treatment plan and prescribed medication.

What this involved became ‘matters of dispute’ after the woman died around 22 hours later, according to the tribunal’s ruling.

At an inquest into the woman’s death the following year, Dr Demanya ‘maintained explicitly’ under oath that he had prescribed antibiotics – which sepsis patients should be treated with – as well as paracetamol and IV saline fluids at 3am.

He also claimed to have asked for her to be fitted with a catheter so her urine could be monitored.

But another nurse, who administered the woman’s paracetamol at 3.37am, told the inquest that ‘there was no prescription for antibiotics written up’ at the time.

Dr Demanya then claimed his memory had been ‘jogged’ and he actually remembered prescribing the antibiotics at 3.40am.

Dr Demanya visited Patient A at 5am, as a nurse had found she had fallen out of her bed around an hour earlier, and later claimed he carried out a ‘top to toe’ examination of her.

A third nurse told the tribunal she spoke to Dr Demanya at 5.50am to ask him to prescribe another bag of IV saline fluid as the first had run out, and that there were still ‘no IV antibiotics on the prescription chart’ at the time.

By 6.30am, another doctor had been alerted to Patient A’s worsening condition.

The doctor told the tribunal said Dr Demanya was ‘unsure’ as to whether Patient A was passing urine and, when a catheter was suggested, said: ‘OK, we can arrange that’.

One nurse was also ‘adamant’ Dr Demanya never asked her to fit a catheter.

The tribunal found that ‘restrospectively’ added the antibiotics and catheter to records of his treatment plan to give a ‘false impression’ both were included.

The tribunal heard he did so ‘to protect himself from the potential consequences of having made a clinical error’ and continued with the ‘dishonest cover up’ a year later at the coroner’s court.

Its chair, Gerry Wareham, said: ‘The Tribunal determined that any ordinary decent person would find [Dr Demanya’s] actions in such circumstances to be dishonest.’

The doctor, who qualified at a university in Ghana in 1992 and moved to the UK in 2003, also failed to notify other medics of the ‘gravity’ of Patient A’s condition.

Mr Wareham added: ‘The Tribunal determined that Dr Demanya had seriously undermined public confidence in the profession and had brought the profession into disrepute.

‘It was also of the view that there remained a risk to public safety.

‘The Tribunal therefore determined for these reasons that it was necessary to erase Dr Demanya’s name from the register to protect the wellbeing of the public, promote and maintain public confidence in the profession and to maintain proper professional standards.’

Allen Demanya was found to have falsified hospital records to make it look like he had given the correct treatment to his 75-year-old patient, who died of sepsis.