A disgraced doctor who molested a student nurse on a hospital ward and then tried to blame the incident on ‘cultural norms’ has been passed fit to treat patients again.
Married father-of-two Imran Qureshi, 44, grabbed the breast of the 21-year-old woman and told her he wanted an affair after he saw her as ‘sexually available’ because she had previous boyfriends.
The student nurse, known only as Miss A, was said to be ‘shaken up and distraught’ after reporting how locum senior house officer Qureshi grabbed her chest for two seconds before trying to ‘make light’ of it and then becoming aggressive.
But although Qureshi admitted he had made a ‘misjudgement’, he said ‘cultural norms’ were different in the UK compared with his native Pakistan and he had failed to spot a proverbial ‘red light’ warning him to stay away from the victim.
She claimed she found it difficult to trust male colleagues following the incident and said it had affected her studies.
In June 2017 Qureshi was suspended from medical practice for 12 months after he offered a ‘sincere deep-hearted apology’ to Miss A and insisted it was a ‘moment of madness’ and ‘short, brief touching.’
But after his suspension ended the following year he was made subject to various workplace restrictions which led to him not getting any jobs in medicine for almost five years, leaving him ‘deskilled’.
This month at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester a panel deemed Qureshi’s fitness to practise was no longer impaired after hearing he had undertaken seven locum shifts at hospitals in Luton, Beds and Stoke-on-Trent since a review hearing in August 2021.
