A Somalian doctor who was reported to the General Medical Council because he was ‘impossible to understand’ has been banned from medicine for a year due to his poor English.
Dr Abdullahi Abdi Yussuf, a former asylum seeker based in Manchester, claimed he had been getting patients and colleagues to understand him better by teaching himself Northern dialects like ‘Scouse’, ‘Lanky’ and ‘Manc’.
However, the 51-year-old repeatedly failed a series of English tests in listening, reading, writing and speaking.
In 2015 and 2017 disciplinary panels found the father of nine guilty of misconduct but let him carry on working under supervision on condition he resit the exams under the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). He has not sat any tests since.
Last month a review hearing was held for Yussuf about his progress but today it emerged the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service had suspended him from practise altogether after he sent an email in broken English and littered with spelling and grammatical errors pleading to be allowed to treat patients in the UK and insisting his English was acceptable.
One extract from the email read: ‘My firt (sic) hearing I brought the panal (sic) hearing witnesses of 4nurses and 3 police officers that all of them confirmed to the panal (sic) that there was no barrier language between me and my patients and they understood clearly and that they are happy how I care the patients.’
Somalian doctor Abdullahi Abdi Yussuf, pictured, who was reported to the General Medical Council because he was ‘impossible to understand’ has been banned from medicine for a year due to his poor English
Yussuf first arrived in England in 2003 after studying medicine in his native country but moved on to complete his qualifications at the La Sapienza University of Rome in Rome, Italy, in 2005.
He then returned to Somalia and didn’t fully settle in England until he moved with his family in 2009, before taking up locum junior doctor posts at hospitals in Manchester and Oldham.
In around 2010 he took up the forensic medical examiner post with an agency outside of the NHS and was deployed to police stations to assess suspects in police custody across the North West of England.
As part of his job Yussuf was required to report information back to the custody sergeant in each station and then to hospital consultants if further treatment was required.
But in December 2013 when attempting to convey a patient’s medical history over the phone for a mental health assessment, the listening consultant was so confused by what Yussuf was saying he asked to speak to the police sergeant.
The consultant later field a report saying: ‘His English is of a poor standard and it was impossible to understand the history over the telephone’.
Yussuf took the IELTS test on October 25 2014 but he achieved scores of just five in reading and writing, 5.5 in listening and six in speaking – resulting in an overall score of 5.5 – two points below the 7.5 pass mark.
In September 2016 he scored 6.0 on listening, 5.0 on reading, 6.0 on writing and 6.5 on speaking. In February 2017, he scored just 5.5 in listening, 5.5 in reading, 5.0 in writing and 7.0 in speaking.
In his email to the MPTS sent last November Yussuf said he was currently living in his native Somalia where he was helping treat Covid-19 patients.
His heavily misspelt note read: ‘I have been working in different hospitals in Somalia to help the poor patients and saved the lives of many patiients affected corona virus (sic).
‘As you know the GMC has imposed ristraction (sic) of my leicence (sic) to practice because of english language and not my clinical skills and my medical compitance (sic) and I could not work in UK due this stress (sic).
‘I have been working in UK different hospitals since 2009 and I had no complain (sic) regarding my clinical skills and medical practise from my patients and there was no consultant who made compaling (sic) how I treated them.
‘The only issues was a lady consultant that called to me while I was driving on raining (sic) day to get history a patient (sic) that I referred her (sic) and we could not hear well enough and then made complain (sic) that I was not speaking good english but she confirmed the mental health patient (sic) that Ibrefered (sic) my diagnosis was right and no clinical compitance (sic).
Last month a review hearing was held for Yussuf, pictured, about his progress but today it emerged the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service had suspended him from practise altogether after he sent an email in broken English and littered with spelling and grammatical errors pleading to be allowed to treat patients in the UK and insisting his English was acceptable
‘I have done more English courses and now I improved the leval (sic) of my english but when I do the test I feel stress. I can not attend this hearing as there is second wave of Covid 19 and UK there is total lock down and I am in Somalia.
‘I request from the panal (sic) to take off this restriction on my GMC to work in UK, come and help my 9 children feeding and clothing. I hope that the panal (sic) will accept my kindly request and consider my case especial circumetance (sic)…’
Ceri Widdett, lawyer for the General Medical Council told the Manchester hearing: ‘Dr Yussuf’s fitness to practise medicine remains impaired by reason of insufficient knowledge of the English language.
‘He has provided no objective evidence of remediation and has not provided satisfactory IELTS test results, nor demonstrated he is at the required standard in any of the area of the IELTS test.
‘There are no recent workplace reports or reports from a clinical supervisor or any feedback on his English in a clinical setting. There is no objective evidence Dr Yussuf has kept his knowledge up-to-date.
‘He stated he felt stressed when taking the English language tests but there are other steps he could take to prove proficiency in English language.
‘Dr Yussuf has clearly not fully addressed the concerns over the last seven years and there has also been a significant delay since he last practised in the UK and as such, there is a risk of further deterioration in his use of the English language as he has not been using it clinically on a daily basis.’
Panel chairman Julia Oakford agreed for a further review to be held for Yussuf next year.
But she told the hearing: ‘The Tribunal was disappointed by the efforts Dr Yussuf has made in the time afforded to him since the last review of his case. It noted Dr Yussuf’s comments in his email of 15 November 2020, ‘I request from the panal to take off this restriction on my GMC to work in UK’ (sic).
‘He has provided no evidence to satisfy the Tribunal that he has remediated the concerns in regard to his knowledge or English or provided any information that his medical skills and knowledge are up-to-date.
‘The Tribunal considered that his insight has not developed and, in fact, may have reduced. He does not appear to appreciate why the conditions were imposed on his registration in the first place.’