A senior doctor in emergency medicine has been suspended for misconduct which could have led to the death of patients at Stevenage’s Lister Hospital.

Doctor Shariekkal Siddhi Narayanan trained in India and qualified in 2007, gaining a licence to practise in the UK in early 2017.

He was given a one-year contract as a senior clinical fellow in emergency medicine at Lister in March 2017, but was sacked in January 2018 after being placed under supervision over concerns about his clinical practice.

The East and North Herts NHS Trust - which runs Lister - reported Dr Narayanan to the General Medical Council, and a hearing by the Medical Practitioners' Tribunal Service, focused on the treatment of three patients, concluded last week.

The tribunal found Dr Narayanan had dishonestly signed a blood transfusion form in another doctor's name in July 2017, and had failed to make adequate medical notes for this patient.

In August 2017 a patient with a history of cardiac problems arrived at Lister with chest pain, but Dr Narayanan did not arrange for her to have an echocardiogram or be assessed by a cardiologist, and failed to diagnose acute coronary syndrome.

Instead, he arranged for her to be discharged without checking support at home was adequate.

The on-duty consultant said the patient had "known unstable symptoms" and was "very high risk", but Dr Narayanan wrote "patient can be discharged in a stable condition".

On the same day, another patient arrived with complaints of dizziness and vomiting.

Dr Narayanan failed to act on advice from a consultant and arrange a CT scan, instead diagnosing a panic attack and arranging to discharge him.

Expert witness David Hamer, a consultant in emergency medicine at Leeds Teaching Hospital, said Dr Narayanan's actions could have resulted in the death of all three patients.

Dr Narayanan, who left the UK in July 2018 to continue practising emergency medicine in India, said: "The system in India is vastly different to in the UK - I made my own decisions, whereas in the UK there are consultants in charge. I now understand I can learn a lot from my senior colleagues."

The tribunal concluded: "Dr Narayanan's conduct had the potential to adversely impact on patient safety." It concluded he still poses a risk to patient safety and suspended his UK medical licence for nine months.