A GP faces being struck off after he was found to have acted irresponsibly by prescribing sleeping tablets to a patient who talked of killing herself.

Iain Kerr, 61, who has practised medicine in the Glasgow area for 30 years, acted in a way “likely to bring the profession into disrepute” by prescribing an elderly patient 30 sodium amytal pills in 1998, according to the General Medical Council.

Dr Kerr was also branded irresponsible for failing to refer the woman, known as Patient A, to hospital after she overdosed on temazepam tablets in 2005. John Donnelly, chairman of the GMC Fitness to Practise Panel sitting in Manchester, added that the doctor's decision to give her more tablets several days later was “illogical”.

The panel, which will reconvene today to decide what sanctions Dr Kerr should face, said that his decision to give Patient A the pills after she told him of her wish to commit suicide was “inappropriate, irresponsible, likely to bring the profession into disrepute and not in your patient's best interest”.

However, the panel found that Dr Kerr was not irresponsible for telling colleagues that he had prescribed sleeping pills to patients to help them to end their lives. It also found that he had not prescribed Patient A with sodium amytal tablets after she had specifically told him she was unhappy with her quality of life, and that he had not failed to take sufficient measures to dissuade Patient A from suicide.

Dr Kerr, who has practised medicine for 30 years at the Williamwood Medical Centre in Clarkston, Glasgow, said that he gave Patient A the sleeping pills as an “insurance policy”. He said: “She said, ‘Give me something that I can take if things get too bad', and I said, ‘Yes.'”

She disposed of the pills seven years later, when Dr Kerr was investigated after remarks in an appraisal that

his “achievements” included helping patients at the end of their lives. Strathclyde Police investigated Dr Kerr but took no action after deciding that there was insufficient evidence.

Patient A was an osteoporosis sufferer who loved playing bridge and attending family events but feared that she was becoming a burden upon her family, the panel heard. Her son told the GMC that she was strong minded and had a high regard for Dr Kerr.

He also said that she was profoundly affected by the deterioration and death of her sister from bone cancer.

Dr Kerr insisted that Patient A had “firm views about how she wanted her life to end” and wanted to maintain control over what happened to her. She had made an advance statement in which she expressed her desire not to be resuscitated if she became gravely ill, the GMC was told.

Seven years after he gave her the sleeping tablets she committed suicide, aged 87, in December 2005. She died 12 days after making a failed suicide attempt with a temazepam overdose. Two days after the first attempt, Dr Kerr prescribed more temazepam, which she took with other drugs to kill herself. Dr Kerr denied that this prescription had been “reckless”.

During the seven-day hearing the GP, who was once a member of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Scotland, said that he believed the law was “out of step” with what many people thought on euthanasia and assisted suicide. “My concern was for the wellbeing of these patients who for one reason or another have put their trust in me to assist them,” he said.

The GMC ruled that Dr Kerr's had brought the profession into disrepute by not making a record of why he had prescribed sodium amytal pills to a total of four patients and for poor record keeping in relation to a fifth. The GP prescribed the pills to all five patients, aged between 61 and 75, despite the fact that four of them did not suffer from insomnia. Medical guidelines state that the sleeping pills should be used only to treat “severe and intractable insomnia”.

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