Locum doctor took patient to church for exorcism

A patient has complained that a GP told her to stop taking her medication – and took her to a pentecostal church he was running where she underwent an exorcism instead. Dr Thomas Gerard O’Brien was working as a locum GP in Staffordshire when he treated the woman, who had been prescribed anti depressant, anti hypertensive and analgesic medication.

The patient, who has not been named, claimed that she stopped taking the medication after Dr O’Brien advised her that “there is another way” and gave her lifts to meetings at a pentecostal church in Stoke on Trent over several weeks. She claimed that she was advised that “God is her surgeon and God will heal her”. She said that Dr O’Brien sent her texts and books and pamphlets about the church, which he ran with another person. These included An Occult Checklist – a guide to activities considered to be within the Occult – which had the words ‘Compiled and Written by Tom XXX O’Brien’ inside and a ‘Prayer of Repentance’.



The woman said she was subjected to a four-hour ‘testimony’ where an exorcism was performed on January 19. She claimed that Dr O’Brien specifically told her not to tell her psychiatrist about the meetings – because they “do the devil’s work”. And that he further told her that if she told the General Medical Council (GMC) “she would be cursed”. The patient ignored this advice and complained to both – after she broke down about her treatment and first told her psychiatrist who then rang a confidential helpline to report her allegations.

The allegations that the patient made to the psychiatrist were reported to the GMC’s Interim Orders Panel, who found that there “may be impairment of Dr O’Brien’s fitness to practise which poses a real risk to members of the public”. They imposed a series of conditions on Dr O’Brien’s registration for 18 months, including that he must confine his medical practice to posts within the NHS, to notify the GMC of any professional appointments he accepts and to allow the GMC to exchange information with his employer. The GMC’s primary concern was that Dr O’Brien was allowing his religious beliefs to influence patient care. Dr O’Brien denied all of the accusations, calling them “attacks” on his “private Christian faith and life”.