Trainee doctor is suspended for 12 months for faking signatures over competencies

A trainee doctor who used a senior nurse’s computer account to sign off assessments of his work in her name has been suspended from the UK medical register for 12 months.

In December 2016, Joon Faii Ong was a foundation year 1 trainee working at Lister Hospital, Stevenage. As part of his training he was obliged to gain proficiency in 15 core procedures. Trainees who feel confident performing a core procedure may ask a senior member of staff to observe them and, if they are considered competent, sign a positive assessment on their e-portfolio.

The ward sister working with Ong on the short stay unit that day, Rebecca Klinnert, told a medical practitioners’ tribunal that he had asked her a couple of times to fill in his “e-tab,” as the trainees’ assessments were called. She agreed to do so later that day when she had some time.

Later, when both were sitting at the nurses’ station, he again asked if she could complete the form. She agreed, but said that since she was using her computer for something else, she would log in in front of Ong. Leaning over him, she entered her password and details, but before she could begin the assessment section, the phone rang.

Ong told her: “It’s ok, I’ll do the bits I’ve got to do,” said Klinnert, which struck her as odd, since she knew of no such part. He was typing while she was on the phone, and she was then distracted by a patient’s relatives arriving. When she returned to Ong he said: “It’s ok, I’ve sorted it.”

Looking at the screen, she saw the words “assessment complete.” She said that she found this “quite presumptuous” but made no comment.

Later Ong was called into a meeting by the director of medical education for East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust to explain why all 15 of his core competencies had been signed off on the same day by the same person. He at first said that Klinnert had signed off on them all on the same day after assessing them over a longer period. When he was told that she denied signing them, he acknowledged doing so himself but said that she had verbally agreed to sign.

Klinnert told the tribunal that she had believed she would be signing one assessment for the communication skills competency, the only kind she had ever signed. She was not qualified to sign all 15, some of which involved procedures that were not performed on the short stay ward.

The tribunal found that Ong had been dishonest in completing all 15 assessments himself. It also found that he had failed on six occasions to respond to General Medical Council requests for a work details form it required for its investigation. Ong was not present or represented at his tribunal hearing in Manchester.

Counsel for the GMC sought his erasure from the register, noting that he had stopped engaging with the regulatory process in February 2017, and had shown no evidence of insight or remorse beyond calling his actions “inappropriate” and “an oversight.”

But “the tribunal took into account the fact that Dr Ong’s dishonesty was opportunistic, rather than planned, and he was described as a good doctor,” said Julia Oakford, who chaired the tribunal. He was a trainee doctor in his first job and “there was a lack of clear evidence from the trust as to whether Dr Ong knew what was expected of him.” She concluded, “Erasure would be disproportionate at this time.”

The suspension will take effect after 28 days unless Ong appeals.