Locum doctor was tired and 'dithery', inquest hears

A foreign doctor who administered a fatal overdose to a 70-year-old man seemed tired and was "dithery" at the time, the dead man's partner told an inquest on Thursday.

David Gray died after he was given more than ten times the recommended daily dose of diamorphine, according to his family's lawyers.

Dr Daniel Ubani, a locum doctor from Germany, was on his first shift for a GP out-of-hours service provider on February 16, 2008 when he injected Gray.

Gray's partner Lynda Bubb told the first day of the inquest in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire: "The doctor seemed a bit dithery.

"He was muttering to himself. He took everything out that he needed and placed it on the window sill.

"He did not speak very much English but what he said I understood.

"He seemed very tired and not as alert as he could have been as a doctor."

Bubb said she called the out-of-hours service provider SuffDoc, now called Take Care Now, at lunchtime when her partner refused to eat because of the pain he was in from kidney stones.

The inquest heard that the doctor arrived almost four hours later arrived.

Bubb said she told the doctor that Gray usually received 100mg of pethidine as pain relief.

She said: "I knew they did not carry pethidine so I said it needed to be diamorphine.

"To my knowledge he did not physically examine David. I did not see him take his pulse or blood pressure, but I was out of the room for a short time."

Bubb said that Ubani gave Gray two injections and then left the syringes on the window sill.

Bubb added she checked on her partner half an hour after Ubani left and he appeared to be asleep.

"Some time later I realised there was something wrong with David." she said. "He did not seem to be moving in any way and he did not respond to me."

The inquest was told that emergency services arrived and a short while later Gray, from Manea, Cambridgeshire, was pronounced dead.

Ubani was charged with death by negligence at a court in Witten in Germany, given a nine-month suspended sentence and ordered to pay 4,500 pounds costs, a spokesman for the family lawyers said.

The inquest at Wisbech Coroner's Court in Cambridgeshire is expected to continue to February 4.