A village GP on a remote Scottish island has been struck off after making abusive late-night phone calls to a female doctor at the practice.
Paul Scott, 59, was also accused of initimidating another female colleague by kicking the door of a consultation room before shouting at her while inches from her face.
Scott, a general practitioner at the health centre in the tiny fishing village of Brae on the Shetland island of Mainland, was found guilty of serious professional misconduct and his name was ordered to be erased from the medical register.
It was claimed during the probe that an officer declined to call the Scott because ‘he doesn’t respond well to police contact.’
At the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, Scott, who qualified in medicine 36 years ago, was described by patients on Facebook as a ‘wonderful empathetic doctor’.
However, Scott – nicknamed ‘Doc MacMartin’ – was struck off following a series of temper-fuelled tirades against female colleagues at his surgery.
In the first incident in March 2018, the GP flew into a rage at a female workmate known as ‘Colleague A’ after a complaint was made against her regarding patient care.
The Manchester hearing was told there had been a ‘tense clinical situation involving a potentially unwell patient requiring an ECG’ and the woman who was with a patient was shocked when Scott began ‘hammering’ and ‘kicking’ the door to her room.
GP Paul Scott, 59, was found guilty of serious professional misconduct following a series of incidents with female colleagues
He eventually gained access before backing the woman against the wall and berating her in such close proximity that she could ‘feel his spittle on her face’.
In a statement the woman, who had just returned from leave, said: ‘He was about a millimetre from my face. All through the day he was telling staff that he was going to report me, on what grounds no-one knew. His actions were so premeditated.
‘It appeared to me that he had been thinking about how he could bully me out of the workplace whilst I was on annual leave.
‘He approached me the minute I arrived that morning – it was full on aggressive and intimidating behaviour.’
Scott was later suspended from the practice in April 2020 by NHS Shetland for undisclosed reasons but reportedly while at home he began drinking heavily and turned on another colleague known as Dr C in August 2021 after discovering she had been working as a locum alongside Colleague A.
But he later bombarded a second female colleague with abusive and drunken late night phone calls over a week long period in which he told her repeatedly to ‘f*** off’.
Both women were said to have been left severe distress and upset by the incidents and Police Scotland were subsequently called in to investigate Scott.
The GP had previously worked with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to help local fishermen undergo medical examinations before going to sea.
Scott was a general practitioner at the health centre (pictured) where he had been a partner since 1999
He became a partner at the Brae Health Centre in 1999 after a period working for the Scottish Office, before taking early retirement from the NHS in 2021.
Dr C said: ‘I was awakened from sleep by a phone call from Dr Paul Scott. He was very agitated when he phoned. Shouting at me, repeating my name over and over.
‘He seemed to be very angry because I had worked the Friday and had been in the next room.
‘He said: “What did you talk about at coffee?” and “You had coffee with her” and [was] saying “She is a bad person”, “Have you ever been referred to the GMC?”, “Are you colluding with them?”
‘He said he wouldn’t put it on FB – yet. He would not let me speak. He was pretty intimidating and I felt extremely upset, ended up putting the phone down and had little sleep that night before going to do a day’s locum in the morning.’
Concerned by Scott’s beahviour, Dr C kept a timeline of events. She recalled how on September 4 Scott started phoning her at about 11pm and then ‘phoned roughly every half an hour a further twice into Sunday morning’.
She wrote in her timeline: ‘He has been on the phone tonight, abusing me, saying he doesn’t trust me and saying he had the right to do this. He was drunk. I’m minded to speak to the police to make them aware – he has no right to abuse or frighten me.
‘He wouldn’t listen to me when I asked him to get off the phone and stop this. He sounded drunk and in a rage.
The health centre is in the tiny fishing village of Brae (pictured) on the Shetland island of Mainland
‘One of the phone calls was just “f*** you, f*** you, f*** you” over and over. The calls got progressively worse, in the night at half hour intervals. In the end shouting at me to f*** off and saying he doesn’t like me or trust me that I’m a liar, in collusion.
‘Anything I said was twisted and thrown back. I couldn’t get a word in to respond if. If I tried, he screamed at me. He repeated my name over and over, was intimidating and me saying “You need help Paul” made it worse.
‘All of this seems to have been kicked off by me doing that locum work for two days. I spoke with the police and said it’s intolerable, I’m on call and have to answer the phone, and eventually spoke to the police in Lerwick.
‘But the officer I spoke to was reluctant to phone him as he said, “He doesn’t respond well to police contact”.
‘I said I was concerned after speaking with his relative that he might try and come through my door, if he was in the vicinity. But he said I shouldn’t be worried about that and in the end the best I could do was put the phone through to the hospital.
‘The policeman said if he abused the person on hospital switchboard then they would act. The hospital agreed to phone me on another line if there were any calls.’
She told other colleagues about the calls and they responded: ‘He’s very unpredictable and its affecting everyone. He is drinking and has been phoning (people) when drunk during the night and sending abusive texts – trying to control and intimidate.
‘He seems to be in a terrible rage much of the time. Apparently, he is completely in denial – it started getting worse after his suspension.’
When quizzed Scott claimed he did not believe he had acted aggressively towards Colleague A and said he ‘may have had one or two glasses of wine’ when he contacted Dr C.
His lawyer Stephen Brassington said the abusive phone calls arose out of a ‘mistrust of colleagues’ and added: ‘The distress caused to Colleague A and Dr C was not the product of any intent on Dr Scott’s part.
‘The incident with Colleague A occurred in a tense clinical situation involving a potentially unwell patient requiring an ECG.
‘His conduct amounted to an overreaction in a high-pressure setting not an act of misconduct warranting disciplinary sanction.
‘Characterising such conduct as misconduct could risk setting an unhelpful precedent for clinical professionals working under pressure. He had a previously unblemished 30-year career in the NHS.’
But Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service chairman Mr Douglas Mackay said: ‘The Tribunal determined that the doctor’s actions in forcefully hitting the door of the consultation room, causing genuine alarm to Colleague A.
‘It found this to be an unacceptable and aggressive confrontation with Colleague A in the workplace and Dr Scott’s actions caused Colleague A to fear for her personal safety.
He added: ‘Persistent telephone calls were made by Dr Scott to Dr C. The abusive language involved the repeated use of Dr C’s name and some of the calls were made during antisocial hours.
‘The nature and number of these calls, as well as their content, were such that they caused Dr C to feel fearful for her personal safety and prompted her to contact the police for advice on that issue. Dr C described feeling terrified.’
