LONDON: A radiographer from Kerala has been suspended from practising in Britain for six months after a panel found she was not able to do basic procedures like X-raying a hand or foot that a radiographer “straight out of training would be able to do”, and that she was putting the health of UK patients at risk.
Smitha Johny, an Indian national who trained in India, had declared her first language as English on her application to be registered with the health and care professionals council (HCPC) in 2021. By law, radiographers must be registered with it to work in the UK. She had also declared English as her first language on her application to work as a radiographer at the private hospital, North Downs Hospital, in Surrey, where she started working in Jan 2023. She also claimed to have 23 years of experience.
Johny had to resign and is back in India.
However, the health and care professions tribunal service found that she struggled to communicate with patients and colleagues in English, was unable to answer basic questions about the radiography process, could not identify basic anatomy, did not follow required guidelines, was unable to set a up an X-ray machine, failed a mandatory life support course, and misrepresented her experience. Theyfound her performance reflected incompetence rather than “misconduct”, saying she was “naïve” and “did not understand the expectations in the UK, which may be different from those where she was working in a remote part of India”.
Her line manager, Fernando Pinto, was so concerned about her performance that he presented himself as a patient coming for a hip X-ray. She pointed the machine towards his knee, not his hip, which was a radiation breach causing unnecessary exposure, which could cause cancer. Pinto told the panel she showed “no knowledge about the X-ray machine”, did not know how to position it and did not know what any of the buttons were for. She also did not ask him enough about his personal details to check she was X-raying the correct patient.
She was unable to recognise the scaphoid bone in the wrist, nor could she identify a fracture in the neck from an X-ray, and did not know what a femur bone was. She also failed the life support course because she could not understand anything the instructor was saying.
At her three months review in April 2023, when confronted with her poor performance, she said she was “more like a manager in her previous role” and had worked on the hospital reception desk in India checking in patients. She also said she had worked with CT scanners and not X-rays. She was then told she would be put on authorised leave that could leave to termination.
On April 24, 2023 she resigned.
On April 26, 2023 her manager referred her to the HCPC raising concerns about her command of English and lack of professional knowledge. The hospital also contacted the home office, which gave her 60 days to leave the UK.
In an earlier stage of the proceedings, Johny had said the X-ray machines in India were “entirely different to those at the hospital” and alleged there was “racism in the workplace”.
Johny required a Malayalam interpreter to attend her virtual video hearing, which was held in March this year. She was in India at the time and only attended on the first day, saying she was ill and her “family condition is very bad”. She did not attend after that and did not make any submissions.
