A locum doctor who told a patient she needed a CT scan "to see if she had a brain" has been erased from the U.K. medical register. The same doctor urinated in a hospital sink twice and ignored COVID-19 protocols.
The misconduct of Dr. Graham Evangele Eli Michael Graham Holmes (General Medical Council reference number 2215639) occurred between August 2019 and March 2021, when he worked as a locum consultant in Hampshire, Dorset, Greater Manchester, and the Wirral (south of Liverpool). The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) found on 23 October that there was "no evidence of an acknowledgment, appreciation of, or apology for, his proven serious misconduct."
At the Gosport War Memorial Hospital, Hampshire, in August 2019, a colleague said she had overheard Holmes telling the woman she needed the scan but that the patient did not hear the comment, according to a BBC article posted on 28 October. This incident was alleged to have been harassment related to a disability as it intended to violate the patient's dignity or create "an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment." Holmes, who qualified in medicine in November 1974 at the University of London, told the MPTS he could not remember if he made the comment.
In another episode at the same hospital, a colleague watched through an internal window as Holmes urinated into the sink while pouring water from a cup down the sink, the BBC stated.
Concerns were raised about Holmes' failure to adhere to COVID-19 infection control protocols while working at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital in Dorset in 2020. Later in the same year, a manager at the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan said Holmes was the "worst member of staff for not wearing his mask properly," the article continued.
Holmes is said to have had a constant cough and a temperature of 39° C on 30 October 2020 when he attended work at Wigan, Wrightington, and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Wigan Today pointed out on 16 October 2024.
The MPTS also found that Holmes had deliberately failed to comply with conditions placed on his registration over six weeks while working for the Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Trust between 21 January and 15 March 2021. He failed to tell the General Medical Council about his work and his employer about the conditions The regulator said that was deliberate and the "most serious" element of his misconduct, the BBC noted.
In response to the allegation that he worked without being closely supervised and failed to declare his locum position on a form, Holmes said he did not think the conditions applied to his work at the time. He will now have an opportunity to appeal against the MPTS's decision.
Editor's Note: Another U.K. doctor called Dr. Graham Holmes wishes to make it clear that he has never had an MPTS hearing and that Dr. Graham Evangele Eli Michael Holmes is aged in his 70s.
