Paediatrician who ignored calls to examine child who later died is struck off

A paediatric registrar who ignored nurses’ requests to examine an ill child and then falsified records to claim that she had seen the boy has been struck off for misconduct.

Vasudha Mashankar, who was an on-call registrar at North Tees Hospital on the night of 27 March 2015, continued to rely on a diagnosis of viral gastritis made by a consultant, even as the boy’s symptoms worsened and he began to complain of neck pain as well as headache.

He finally underwent computed tomography the next day after a further sharp deterioration; it revealed an intracranial bleed, from which he died hours later. The boy, whose age was not disclosed …