Medical authorities in Britain have suspended a Nigerian doctor, Ewere Onyekpe, for having a sexual relationship with a patient, including in a hospital’s toilet.
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal of the General Medical Council (MPT of the GMC) – a medical regulatory body in the United Kingdom – had in January imposed a sanction of six months on Onyekpe’s practising licence after he was found guilty by an investigative tribunal that looked into the matter.
Premium Times reports that the tribunal’s verdict, which took effect in February, was due for review six months later.
Onyekpe, a Nigerian-born medical doctor, had in June and July 2020 had a sexual relationship with an unnamed female.
The sexual relationship was said to have begun after Onyekpe treated the patient “in his capacity as a locum registrar in the Accident and Emergency department at the Whittington Hospital in London.”
The details of the act are contained in a court judgement which indicated that both the doctor and the patient continued their sexual relationship until 24 July 2020, when the patient reported to the police that she had been raped in the toilet by Onyekpe.
Apart from having sex with the patient in the hospital’s toilet on the night of 10 June, Onyekpe still went to the patient’s home the following morning and had sex with her.
The police, while continuing with its investigation, had also reported the case to the General Medical Council, which in turn set up the tribunal.
The medical tribunal found that the charges against the doctor, “all of which he admitted, amounted to a course of conduct which amounted to ‘serious misconduct’”.
In a witness statement provided during the tribunal, Onyekpe said, “I appreciate that what I did was awful and that I let down myself and my family and my colleagues.
“I also accept this because the power imbalance between me as a doctor and that of the patient; it can be perceived that I took advantage of my professional position in pursuing this brief sexual relationship, consensual though it may have been.”
