Doctor sentenced for manslaughter of leukaemia patient
BMJ 2003; 327 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.327.7417.697-a (Published 25 September 2003) Cite this as: BMJ 2003;327:697
A specialist registrar who supervised the mistaken injection of a cytotoxic drug into the spine of a teenager with leukaemia was sentenced to eight months in prison on Tuesday after pleading guilty to manslaughter.
Dr Feda Mulhem
Credit: HAYDN WEST/PA
Feda Mulhem changed his plea as a retrial was about to begin at Nottingham Crown Court. An earlier trial had to be abandoned because of his ill health ( BMJ 2003;327: 123).
Dr Mulhem, 36, who trained in Damascus, was also sentenced to an additional 10 months' imprisonment after pleading guilty to assaults on his wife and other people. Nine months of the total 18 months' prison sentence were suspended, and he walked free because he has already spent more than his immediate prison term in custody on the assault charges.
He was only three days into his first post as a specialist registrar in haematology at Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham, in January 2001 when he supervised a senior house officer in injecting vincristine into the spine of Wayne Jowett, 18, who was in remission from leukaemia. The drug is meant to be injected intravenously and is fatal if injected into the spine.
Within 15 minutes both doctors had realised their mistake, but it was too late to save the teenager's life. Dr Mulhem later told police he thought he was administering methotrexate, which is properly injected into the spine.
The senior house officer had been in the department for only five weeks, and neither doctor had been given training in administering cytotoxic drugs. Though the senior house officer checked twice to be certain of Dr Mulhem's instructions, he was told to go ahead.
The prosecution accused Dr Mulhem of failing to check the patient's haematology chart, failing to see which drug should have been administered, and failing to check instructions on the syringe that vincristine should only be injected into a vein.
He later underwent retraining as a specialist registrar at Nottingham City Hospital. Similar blunders involving vincristine have been made 14 times in Britain since 1985 ( BMJ 2001;322: 257). Four other doctors have been prosecuted in Britain for the same mistake but all were eventually cleared.