Cambridge professor Mohamed Atef Hakmi cleared of faking poor IQ test in brain damage compensation claim
A Cambridge University professor and orthopedic surgeon accused of deliberately failing IQ and memory tests to support his £1 million brain damage claim against the NHS has been cleared of dishonesty by a High Court judge.
64-year-old Dr., a lecturer at Cambridge Medical School. Mohamed Atef Hakmi suffered a stroke in November 2016, causing permanent disability and forcing him to leave his surgical profession.
He later sued the NHS in London’s High Court, seeking damages of over £1 million.
He claimed medical errors deprived him of important treatment, resulting in brain damage and physical impairments.
But Dr Hakmi faced charges of “fundamental dishonesty” from the NHS after receiving a “very poor” score of 84 on a pre-trial IQ test.
This result placed him below the UK average and, by some measures, in the “borderline intellectually disabled” category, although he continued to teach at Cambridge.
The health service argued that he deliberately exaggerated his disabilities to inflate his claim.
Supreme Court judge, Dr. It ruled that Hakmi had not deliberately performed poorly on the tests, clearing him of any dishonesty.
Judge David Pittaway, MD. He said he believed Hakmi’s poor test results were due not to fraud but to exhaustion and, in part, to problems in his family life.
“I don’t think Mr Hakmi performed poorly in the tests… to deliberately exaggerate the extent of his injury,” he said.
“If Mr Hakmi had deliberately underperformed, this would have gone against everything he had done to rehabilitate himself after his stroke.”
However, the judge found that his lawyers would not have been able to make a better recovery even if he had received the treatment he needed, so Dr. Hakmi was refused payment from the NHS.
The court heard Dr Hakmi was an orthopedic surgeon and medical educator based in Herts, specializing in foot and ankle surgery, as well as lecturing in the UK and abroad.
The court heard he was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and an assistant professor who taught at the University of Cambridge.
He first suffered a stroke in September 2016, but was treated with clot-dissolving thrombolysis and made a very good recovery, returning to the operating room within a few weeks.
But his lawyer, Robert Kellar KC, said the surgeon suffered a second stroke in November 2016 and first noticed symptoms while doing paperwork late at night.
When symptoms resurfaced in the early hours, he went to Lister Hospital in Stevenage and called ahead to tell staff he had had a stroke.
But he was not given the same treatment as before after being examined by an A&E doctor and then speaking to a stroke specialist on the phone through the NHS’s remote stroke care system.
He said he was told he would not be offered thrombolysis because he was “not having a stroke”, with the remote doctor suggesting it could just be migraine or epilepsy.
At the hospital, the stroke was diagnosed only at 9am that day, and at that point it was too late to be treated with the same medications as before.
Dr Hakmi accused the NHS of “cumulative and interrelated” failures which prevented him from receiving thrombolysis treatment, which he claimed would provide a better outcome.
Mr. Kellar, Dr. He said Hakmi was permanently disabled by the stroke, but the worst injuries could have been avoided had it not been for the negligence of staff at Lister and the remote stroke line.
In addition to laxity and decreased sensation in his fingers and toes, he complains of fatigue in his right arm, hand, and grip, which prevents him from performing complex tasks for long periods of time.
He also suffered a brain injury that resulted in short-term memory impairment, impaired concentration, decreased processing speed, and “execution disorders.”
NHS, Dr. He denied responsibility for the injury, arguing that Hakmi’s stroke was not serious enough to require thrombolysis and that it would be long before his symptoms began to take effect.
Lawyers are upset that this type of treatment can also be risky, carrying a significant risk of brain hemorrhage and death, and even if he had been given the treatment, the outcome would likely have been the same.
Also Dr. They accused Hakmi of “fundamental dishonesty” regarding his performance in pre-trial tests.
NHS lawyer John de Bono KC told the court he had a “very poor” IQ score as well as scoring at the bottom of the range on memory tests.
Dr. He noted that Hakmi scored only 84 on the IQ test, which puts him below the 86 percent of the general population, adding: “This is very bad; it shows that it would be difficult to serve as a surgeon or educator at this level.”
He said the “very surprising” and sometimes “surprising” results, which were also assessed by two neuropsychologists who performed memory tests, “raise serious concerns about whether he was doing his best” on the tests.
Dr Hakmi could not remember four single-digit numbers in a row during an exam, and he scored so poorly on tests that he was below 99% of the population in some respects, even though he continued to work as an “educator” at the undergraduate level.
However, Dr. Hakmi refused to join medical staff assessing him before the hearing, telling the court he found the tests “exhausting”.
“Anyone can fail a test, but they should be given the best chance,” he continued.
“I definitely have memory problems, slow exertion. I did everything to cut my losses. I know for a fact that I am not the same as before my stroke.”
Judge Pittaway, ruling on the case, said: “Having considered the totality of the evidence, I conclude that Mr Hakmi’s claim that he is fundamentally dishonest fails.
“I do not think that the defendants acted in accordance with civil standards that Mr. Hakmi was dishonest when examined by the defendant’s experts.
“I had the advantage of observing Mr Hakmi being cross-examined for a full day… I do not think he attempted to mislead the court in any way.
He is a proud man against whom a serious allegation has been made, which, if proven, could have serious consequences for his registration and employment.
“He also presented statements and letters from four colleagues at the hospital proving his honesty and integrity, as well as the steps he had taken to alleviate his post-stroke disability.
“I find that Mr. Hakmi sincerely believes that the diagnosis and treatment he received was sub-optimal and that had he been treated with thrombolysis, he would have made a full or near-complete recovery.”
Despite finding that Hakmi was not a fraud, the judge found the negligence claim in favor of the NHS and rejected his offer of compensation.
He said Dr Hakmi’s stroke symptoms were not severe enough until it was too late for thrombolysis treatment to be provided within the four-and-a-half hour downtime.
According to Lister Hospital’s protocols, the fact that he had recently received such treatment for his first stroke was also “an absolute contraindication to further thrombolysis.”
Even though Hakmi had received thrombolysis treatment, Dr. He said it would not make any difference to Hakmi’s level of recovery.
“In the circumstances where Mr Hakmi made a very good, even imperfect, recovery from the second stroke, I have concluded that thrombolysis is unlikely to have changed the outcome in this case.”
Judge, Dr. It rejected Hakmi’s claim for compensation, but also rejected the NHS’s underlying claim of fraud and ordered the NHS to pay 15 per cent of the surgeon’s litigation costs.
The compensation claim was against East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, which runs Lister Hospital, and Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, where the remote stroke doctor who spoke to Dr Hakmi was located.
