A&E doctor who altered notes after failing to check patient’s blood results before discharge is struck off

A doctor who discharged a patient from a hospital’s accident and emergency department without reviewing blood test results that showed clear signs of a cardiac emergency, then altered the patient’s record to hide his mistake, has been struck off the UK medical register.

Muhammad Umar Farooq was a locum registrar in emergency medicine at Northampton General Hospital in October 2021, when a male patient arrived complaining of chest pain. That evening, about four hours after the patient’s arrival, Farooq entered in his notes a suspected diagnosis of “lower respiratory tract infection.” Five minutes after that he added a further note saying that the patient had left the hospital.

One minute before he wrote his first entry, the patient’s …