A DOCTOR has admitted over-prescribing the painkiller diamorphine to five patients when he was working at Bury General Hospital.

The admission came on the third day of a hearing before the General Medical Council (GMC) in London, where Dr Sumit Mukherjee (34) is facing a series of allegations of serious professional misconduct.

Dr Mukherjee had denied allegations of prescribing excessively, unnecessarily and irresponsibly at the hospital and other claims that the diamorphine was never administered to its intended elderly patients.

Dr Mukherjee is also facing allegations that he failed to attend emergencies when he was the on-call doctor at Fairfield General Hospital.

In May last year, the Preliminary Proceedings Committee of the GMC decided the doctor's registration should be suspended pending a full hearing of his case. But the following month he accepted a job as a locum clinical assessor at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex. The hearing was told how Dr Anita Thomas, an expert in general and geriatric medicine said she had examined the doctor's treatment records and had found his prescribing out of line with general guidance on the administration of drugs.

Halfway through her evidence, Mr Philip Gaisford, counsel for Dr Mukherjee, asked for a special adjournment and after consultations with his client said the allegations of excessive prescribing were now admitted.

However, Dr Mukherjee continued to deny that his prescribing was "unnecessary and irresponsible".

Mr Ian Stern, acting for the Council, said Dr Mukherjee, who earned a reputation as "a poor bleeper responder" among nurses, insisted on over-prescribing the injectable-only drug to five different patients between February and April 1999.

There were seven separate over-prescribing incidents and the Council claimed that on four of these, there was proof that diamorphine was never administered. However, there was no evidence that the doctor injected himself or sold or gave the drugs away.

Nurse Adrienne Smith, who worked at Bury General Hospital, said she had bleeped Dr Mukherjee on March 9, 1999, to see patient Thomas Pasquill.

"I actually asked him if he had got shares in diamorphine as his name was in the register quite a lot." The doctor did not reply to her comment.

It is also alleged by the Council that the doctor failed to attend a cardiac arrest emergency call at Fairfield Hospital on July 17, 1999, while the on-call doctor.

Medical staffing officer, Kay Edwards, said she had instructed Dr Mukherjee to carry out an on-call duty for 24 hours from 9am on July 16, 1999, in place of Dr Amir Ansari.

"As far as I was aware, Dr Mukerjee agreed to do the on-call and there was no dispute as to whether he was on call that night."

The hearing continues.