A doctor took to Twitter to rant about “neurotic” patients who were “crippling” the NHS and called David Cameron an “obsequious Islamophile”.
Christian Solomonides, 37, tweeted messages in which he claimed that 90 per cent of A&E admissions were for “f**ing bulls***’’ callouts. “A few aches and pains . . . Who f***ing cares . . . Just crack on like every other normal thinking person,” he wrote.
Dr Solomonides, an A&E consultant at Barnet Hospital in London, who describes himself as a “physician, point of care sonographer, pianist and powerlifter” also wrote: “The way we suck up to sick doctrines like Islam in the UK is sickening.”
Yesterday at a fitness to practise hearing, Dr Solomonides, of Chingford, northeast London, admitted posting 188 potentially offensive tweets between 2011 and January last year. They were discovered after he was referred to the General Medical Council following an anonymous complaint to the NHS trust for which he worked.
Vivienne van Someren, associate medical director at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, read his tweets and said that he may have a problem with “equality, diversity and discrimination”, the hearing was told.
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Posts included comments about banning the burka and that religion made people “f***ing stupid” and that “abstinence makes the church grow fondlers”. In another tweet he said of the prime minister “Congratulations David, you’ve officially f***ed the NHS”. In another he said immigration led to a rise in A&E patients.
“Army, water cannons and guns needed on the streets. The feral ignorant council-bred youth need living s*** kicked out of them,” he wrote.
Shirlie Duckworth, counsel for the GMC, said that it was clear from Dr van Someren’s evidence that the posts showed Dr Solomonides was “anti-religion but most comments were anti-Islamic” and that derogatory comments had been made about patients.
Dr Solomonides tweeted that he was “sick of busting balls” to help a patient with a broken fingernail who had called an ambulance, and mimicked another by posting: “ ‘You mean to tell me I’ve waited three hours to be told it’s a bruise!!’ Well, use a bit of common sense next time. Nobody forced you to wait.”
Parents bringing children to casualty were another target of his tweets, and he wrote that he was “sure ADHD is merely a polite term for a child who is just a little s***”. Another parent was criticised for “stinking of fags demanding Calpol on prescription” and told to “quit smoking and start investing in your child’s health”.
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In a letter to the trust Dr Solomonides said that he recognised he held a position of authority and that publicly voicing controversial views was inappropriate. Although he conceded that it compromised his professional credibility, he said that it had never influenced his clinical practice in any way.
The hearing continues.