A doctor from the South Derbyshire at the Royal Stoke University hospital was found guilty of misconduct for asking a Muzlim woman to remove her veil during the examination. Dr. Keith Wolverson of Melbourne’s derby private doctors’ aesthetic clinic was caught in a turmoil just for asking his patient to remove her veil for a proper examination.
Meanwhile, Dr. Keith said that he will continue to treat his patients while awaiting the outcome of this sentence which may get him suspended.
A Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) hearing conducted this week determined that he had produced “inappropriate” notes on patients’ language skills, according to DerbyshireLive.
Dr. Wolverson was also found to have made a mistake when he asked one patient to remove her veil to facilitate dialogue before criticizing her English language skills in an email to colleagues.
Dr. Wolverson’s actions were deemed major misconduct by the MPTS. It went on to say that he had done nothing to change his behavior and that he had not gained insight into the patient’s distress as a result of the request to remove her veil, which had been repeated three times.
Dr. Wolverson declined to share his side of the tale and indicated he would continue to treat patients. He was accused of 28 counts of misbehavior, 16 of which were related to the encounter with the patient total of 17 were determined to be proven, with 13 of them connected to the veil incident.
He urged the patient to remove her veil at a session on May 13, 2018, claiming he couldn’t understand her and believed that seeing her mouth movements would help. Despite his request, she did not wish to remove the veil for religious reasons, he persisted in his desire.
Dr. Wolverson said she “spoke bad English” and that he was “struggling to understand her” and was “trying to look at her lip movements to facilitate conversation” in an email on May 25, 2018, in response to a complaint from the patient.
However, the MPTS concluded in early March that Dr. Wolverson had lied during the trial by claiming that he had asked for the veil to be removed because of the patient’s pronounced Stoke-on-Trent accent. The tribunal stated that they had no trouble comprehending the patient when she came to give testimony.
The General Medical Council, which referred Dr. Wolverson’s case to the MPTS, has no clear instructions on how to assess women wearing full-face veils. While it was acknowledged that “there would, of course, be circumstances where this would be entirely appropriate,” Dr. Wolverson “had made no attempt to make any form of assessment about whether removing the face veil was necessary and whether it served any purpose,” it was determined that he “had made no attempt to make any form of assessment about whether removing the face veil was necessary and whether it served any purpose.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Wolverson was found to have criticized the English abilities of 15 patients in their medical notes from January to April 2018 during a hearing held from February 24 to March 4, 2022. In some of the notes, he stated that it was “not acceptable” for one patient to bring a family member who did not speak English to consultation and that it was “frankly, not good enough” when speaking about the mother of another patient’s language abilities.
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