KEY POINTS:
A senior clinician was judged so bad at his job that he would have failed medical school, after spending seven years treating mentally ill patients for four district health boards.
The sorry tale of Dr Nazir Maher became public after he challenged a sacking from his job as senior clinician at the Community Mental Health Centre in Otahuhu.
Last week he lost his bid to be reinstated and paid be compensation for the distress caused by the June 2005 sacking.
Employment Relations Authority member Marija Urlich quashed his case and said in her decision that his dismissal "was justified in all the circumstances".
Maher was hired by the Counties Manakau District Health Board in October 2004, after working for a month in Invercargill and before that in Tauranga and Wanganui.
Lauren Young, communications manager for the CMDHB, said: "It says more about the other DHBs than it does about us... If he wasn't up to scratch, he shouldn't have been working.
"All I can say is thank goodness his deficiencies in practise were picked up. If he was fully creden-tialled, we would have no reason not to employ him - especially if no flags had been raised in previous employment history."
According to the Medical Council's register, Maher is not a registered doctor - the ERA decision said he worked as a MOSS (medical officer special scale), specialising in psychiatry.
He was fired in June 2005 after a panel investigation found he had prescribed a patient clonazepam, an anti-convulsive sedative used to treat epilepsy, without telling nurses or noting the drug in the patient's records. When questioned by the head nurse, he apparently denied having prescribed the drug.
Maher also spoke poor English and - apparently, at the time he was hired - was under investigation for serious misconduct by the Medical Council of New Zealand.
Late in 2004, he learnt the council had placed "supervision and monitoring" restrictions on his practice.
To meet those, Maher agreed to pay for a consultant psychiatrist to sit in on his sessions. Dr Roger Elliott spent 10 hours watching Maher with five patients, gave him feedback and reviewed clinical files.
He reported: "Dr Maher would need to be considerably more skilled in his use of the English language. He would need intensive direct, ongoing monitoring of his work (more akin to that required by an intern) and would need much further education in both psychiatric practises and relationship skills ...
"His motivation to complete these not inconsiderable tasks is low."
Another expert, Dr Christopher Gale, was called in because Maher thought Elliot had been "hostile".
Gale's conclusions were even more dire: "Dr Maher is well below the standard of a senior registrar... I examine final year medical students interviewing actors; if any of them acted as I have seen Dr Maher do so, I would not allow them to pass. His current practice is below an acceptable standard."
Urlich found that the CMDHB had followed all the proper procedures and that Maher's dismissal had been justified.
The Herald on Sunday tried to contact Maher at his last - and only - known address, in Manukau City. The manager of the apartment building said he had moved out on August 22 last year and did not know where he was or how to contact him.
