GREGG:DENTISTRY HEAD WHO USED ‘VULGAR LANGUAGE’ TO TRAINEE KEEPS JOB
A former hockey international who used ‘vulgar language’ to a female trainee in his job as a children’s hospital consultant can continue practising.
Dr Terry Gregg repeatedly called the newly-qualified dentist ‘gorgeous’ and ‘sexy’ and pretended to pat her bottom, the General Dental Council heard.
He admitted he told the woman, referred to as Ms A, that she was ‘obsessed with sex’, while he was head of paediatric dentistry at the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children.
Dr Gregg also routinely called her ‘sexy’ and ‘gorgeous’, asked her if she sunbathed topless, and, in her presence, declared that he ‘could do with a good blow job’.
The GDC panel ruled Dr Gregg’s behaviour constituted misconduct but that his fitness to practise is NOT impaired.
GDC panel chairman Margaret Gray said: ‘On a number of occasions you made inappropriate comments and misplaced attempts at humour, and used vulgar language, either directed at Ms A or in her presence.
‘Your comments were insensitive, some were offensive and others had the potential to cause offence.’
‘As a consultant, you were in a position of authority, with the responsibility to set the tone of communication in the department.’
Mrs Gray added, however, that Dr Gregg was ‘endeavouring to avoid a hierarchical department’ and had since undergone training in ‘workplace ethics and diversity’.
Referring to his new job, she said: ‘There is no evidence whatsoever of inappropriate comments being made to staff, patients or dental students, and your behaviour has been described as exemplary.’
The decision means he will not even be warned by the panel over his behaviour and his record remains unblemished.
Dr Gregg had resigned his post, which he had held since 1994, in September 2009 and now works in temporary positions at Kings College Hospital and St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington.
Ms A, now a registrar, told the hearing that she ‘dreaded’ coming to work after joining the department as a 24-year-old graduate of Queen’s University Belfast in 2003.
‘There was a period of a few months that was absolutely terrible to the point of just dreading coming to work,’ she said.
‘I used to sit outside in the car park and wait until the last possible minute to come in – it was just dreadful.’
A spokesman for the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust said: ‘We don’t comment on individual members of staff.’
The hockey legend won 103 caps for Ireland and 42 caps for GB during the 1970s.
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