Doctor who faked afternoon appointments to choose up youngsters from faculty suspended
Dr Helen Eisenhauer feared that she would not be able to pick up her kids from the after-school run and blocked off appointments — now she has been suspended for months
A GP who faked having appointments with patients to avoid missing picking her children up from school has been suspended from practicing. She will not be allowed to work as a GP for five months as a result of her actions.
Dr Helen Eisenhauer, 43, was a well-loved family doctor, respected among her local community. However, a tribunal heard she had blocked off at least two appointments so that she could leave work to pick up her kids.
She was eventually caught after one of her fellow GPs spotted strange gaps in her schedule before duping her into a meeting. She initially denied doing anything wrong but has since admitted to it believing she was struggling to get the work-life balance right.
According to the Daily Mail, Dr Eisenhauer had a regular finish at work at around 4:45pm. However, as the part-time doctor had a slew of appointments during certain days, she became worried she would not be able to pick her kids up from their after-school club at 6pm.
As a result, a tribunal looking into her case found that the GP had created face-to-face appointments with two patients she had already treated on the phone that day. But while they were branded as being face-to-face, Dr Eisenhauer was nowhere to be seen, as it allowed her to leave at her normal 4:45pm finish.
Her scheme was eventually unearthed when a fellow doctor at the Stenhouse Medical Centre in Arnold, near Nottingham, spotted some “anomalies” in her appointments and pulled her in for an explanation. At the beginning, she had denied any wrongdoing, but further digging revealed her scheduling slip-ups.
Enquiries into her activities found that she had blocked off her entire diary in the late afternoon so that she did not need to see other patients. However, she also was found to have faked entries into the work diary, saying that she had indeed had face-to-face appointments.
Dr Eisenhauer, who is reported to earn £60k a year for her work, eventually referred herself to the General Medical Council for the incident and admitted that she was acting dishonestly. When asked by investigators what happened, she said she was having a tough time to “juggle her work and parental responsibilities”.
After joining the practice in 2018, the tribunal heard that the doctor began to struggle with insomnia and sleep deprivation, which soon began to interfere with her work. In an apology to her patients, she admitted that she was unaware of just how much chaos the stunt would cause.
“I did not consider the consequences of writing this entry at the time,” she explained, “I recollect only my worry and embarrassment.” It comes as new figures have shown just how long patients are waiting in order to see their GP.
NHS figures revealed that some 1.7million people waited long than four weeks for a GP appointment in November, based on analysis from the Liberal Democrats. This figure jumps sharply to a massive 7.6million for the entirety of the autumn period; an increase of 300,000 in comparison to last year’s numbers.
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