Doctor gives fatal insulin dose

Mr Johnston was being treated at Belfast City Hospital

A 92-year-old man died of a heart attack after a junior doctor gave him a drugs overdose, an inquest has heard.

Walter Kenneth Johnston was injected with 100 times the correct dose of insulin by a junior doctor at Belfast City Hospital.

Dr Nuzaimin Ahmad claimed he did not know how to treat him.

He used the wrong syringe to administer the drug in the early hours of 25 February 2005. Dr Ahmad no longer practises in the UK.

Belfast Coroner's Court heard he had only been working at the hospital for three weeks.

A letter from the doctor read out in court said he believed that "one unit of insulin was equivalent to one millilitre".

"I have not received any previous instruction in the handling of insulin," it said.

Dr Ahmad, who studied at Queen's University, Belfast, also said he was "unfamiliar with the heart monitor machine".

'Lacking confidence'

He also admitted feeling nervous and lacking confidence as it was his first night shift.

Expert witness Professor Brew Atkinson said Dr Ahmad should have received schooling in insulin at least twice while he was training.

Mr Johnston, from Rathmore Manor in Newtownabbey, had undergone surgery for an aneurysm in his knee.

Deputy State Pathologist Dr Alistair Bentley said that although he was elderly and had a number of life-threatening conditions, he did not believe he would have died at that time had he not received the overdose.

Coroner John Leckey said Dr Ahmad was "someone who recognised that they had limitations, felt isolated, felt nervous and uncertain about how to do the task that was allotted".

"Yet with all that, (he) did not take what seems to be the sensible step of asking someone more senior, be it a senior nurse or a senior colleague, that what he proposed to do was the proper way to do it," he added.

The hospital said it had taken a number of steps to ensure its procedures had been improved.

Mr Johnston's son, Stephen, said he had been heartened by the trust's actions to prevent a similar incident happening again.