Doctor given warning after examining woman’s chest without chaperone at Stoke Mandeville Hospital

Dr Joel Danjuma, who worked at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, was found to have breached good medical practice by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS).

A tribunal said his actions did not amount to serious misconduct and did not mean his fitness to practise was impaired.

However, it did say his conduct ‘did not meet the standards required of a doctor’ and issued a warning, which will stay on his register as a doctor for two years.

Following a week-long hearing, the MPTS ruling read: “Whilst these failings are not so serious as to require any restriction on your registration, the tribunal finds it necessary to respond to the departures from the standards required by issuing this warning in the interests of maintaining good professional standards and public confidence in the profession.”

Dr Danjuma admitted that he had failed to offer a woman a chaperone when he examined her lungs and heart on October 16, 2022.

The doctor, told the tribunal how the woman, known as Patient A, made herself comfortable on the bed and lifted her top and left breast by herself, ‘indicating she was consenting to the examination’.

He said: “I then proceeded to examine her chest. At the time, I did not even consider that I needed a chaperone since I was undertaking a chest examination which I did not consider to be an intimate examination.”

However, the doctor said that ‘on reflection’ he should have considered whether the patient might want a chaperone and given her the opportunity to have one.

General Medical Council guidance says doctors should be sensitive to what patients may think of as intimate and that before conducting such an examination they should offer patients a chaperone.

The tribunal said it ‘would have been clear’ to Dr Danjuma when his patient lifted her night dress that ‘she was not wearing any clothing underneath and her breasts were fully exposed’.

It said: “If not offered before, it was at that stage that Dr Danjuma should have stopped the examination and offered Patient A the opportunity to have a chaperone present.”

Patient A complained to the hospital about her treatment in October 2022, but a subsequent Thames Valley Police investigation into alleged sexual assault resulted in no further action.

The tribunal considered several allegations against Dr Danjuma including that he moved Patient A’s left breast up and down, that he pushed her jaw to turn her head and that he became sexually aroused, with the patient able to feel his erect penis through his trousers.

However, the tribunal found all the allegations not proved.

Dr Danjuma qualified in medicine from Sofia Medical Academy, Bulgaria in 1984 before working in Nigeria and later as a locum speciality registrar in the Emergency Department at Stoke Mandeville. He has not worked as a doctor since October 2022 and is unlikely to work again.