BBC A doctor, accused of a cover-up over the death of a nine-year-old girl, has been found unfit to practise by a tribunal.
Dr Heather Steen was accused of trying to conceal the circumstances of Claire Roberts’ death at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children in 1996.
At the time her parents were told that she had a viral infection that had spread from her stomach to her brain.
Claire’s death was looked at by the 2018 Hyponatraemia Inquiry.
The inquiry concluded that she had died from an overdose of fluids and medication caused by negligent care and that there “was a cover-up”.
The General Medical Council believed Dr Heather Steen had acted dishonestly and engaged in that cover-up and the case was brought to a tribunal.
When the case came to the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), Dr Steen twice applied to be voluntarily removed from the medical register and was twice refused.
Had this been successful, the tribunal would have been halted as she would no longer have been a doctor.
Dr Steen has denied the allegations.
During stage one of the fitness to practise tribunal the chair found that the majority of allegations against Dr Steen were true.
The allegations included:
- There had been a failure to repeat a blood test on Claire on two occasions
- Claire’s death was not reported to the coroner when Dr Steen knew it was both sudden and unexpected
- Dr Steen signed a death certificate when she had inadequate information to do so
- Dr Steen was found to have misrepresented the autopsy report to Claire’s parents
- Dr Steen failed to disclose medical information to the coroner
Based on the evidence the tribunal found that Dr Steen’s fitness to practise had been impaired.
The tribunal will now move on to the next stage, which involves handing down any sanctions.
The most serious of these sanctions would be Dr Steen’s erasure from the medical register.
A decision on that is likely to be made at the end of the week or early next week.
