Doctors fined after patient deaths

TWO Staffordshire general practitioners have been fined after a medical committee upheld complaints about medical treatment from the families of two patients who died.

One of the doctors, who have not been named, was fined pounds 500 after failing to examine a female patient during several visits to his surgery in 1992. He prescribed antibiotics and issued sick notes, but did not examine her. He was eventually called to her home and she was admitted to hospital, where she later died from leukaemia.

In the second case, the Medical Service Committee fined another GP pounds 250 after a 21-month-old girl died from meningitis in April 1993. She had a swelling on her neck and he gave a telephone diagnosis that the child was suffering from a bee sting.