Doctor suspended for asking Muslim woman to remove veil is struck off

A GP who continued to work after being suspended for asking a Muslim patient to remove her veil has been struck off.

Keith Wolverson was suspended after he repeatedly asked the woman to remove her veil during an appointment and eventually “caused” her to remove it. He later said it was because she “spoke poor English” and he was “struggling to understand her”.

However, while he was suspended for nine months for misconduct, he continued to undertake locum work in defiance of explicit instruction given by a misconduct panel.

He has now been struck off because of his “flagrant disregard for the regulatory process” and his failure to attend the Medical Practitioners Tribunal hearing.

In 2022, Dr Wolverson was found guilty of or admitted a total of 17 charges of misconduct relating to incidents between January and May 2018 while working as a locum at urgent care centres in Derby and Stoke. He was suspended for nine months.

In one incident at Royal Stoke University Hospital, he asked a Muslim woman, named as Mrs Q by the tribunal, to take off her niqab three times during a consultation on May 13, 2018, saying he could not hear her describing her daughter’s symptoms.

She refused his initial request, saying she did not want to do so for religious reasons, but he then repeated it.

Dr Wolverson practised at Royal Stoke University Hospital, one of the locations of a number of misconduct allegations – John Keates/Alamy

In an email later that month in response to the complaint, Dr Wolverson said she “spoke poor English”, that he was “struggling to understand her” and was “trying to look at her mouth movements to aid communication”, which the tribunal deemed to be dishonest.

In other incidents, he wrote in the notes of 15 patients criticising their English speaking skills and those of their relatives between January and April 2018, claiming it was “unacceptable” and “not good enough”.

At a review hearing in 2023, he said he had reflected on the incidents, had considered how he would handle similar situations differently and “deeply regretted the comments he made in the patients’ medical notes”.

He told the tribunal: “It would be completely wrong to maintain the suspension and prohibit a doctor further from doing his duty to his patients when there are such grave shortages within the NHS currently.”

The tribunal ruled that Dr Wolverson’s fitness to practise remained impaired, but decided not to extend his suspension. It imposed conditions on his registration for a further 12 months, including being monitored.

He later returned to work under supervision because of “grave shortages within the NHS”. However, in 2024 it was uncovered that he had undertaken locum shifts while suspended in 2022.

‘Disregard for the regulatory process’

A tribunal has found that he had “disengaged” with the process and the consequences of his misconduct entirely, and has decided he should be struck off.

Emma Gilberthorpe, the chairman of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing, said: “When considering sanction, the tribunal reminded itself of the nature of the misconduct and Dr Wolverson’s ongoing lack of insight and remediation.

“It considered that his misconduct was remediable and not fundamentally incompatible with continued registration.

“Dr Wolverson had failed to use previous periods of suspension constructively, had remained disengaged throughout, and had shown a persistent and flagrant disregard for the regulatory process.