Shamed Birmingham medic copied material from Wikipedia to gain qualification

Jun 26 2011 by Jonny Greatrex, Sunday Mercury

A PSYCHIATRIST copied material from Wikipedia and stole ideas from a student’s academic paper to gain the professional qualification she so badly wanted.

Shamed medic Aliveni Ramanujam was suspended after being caught out TWICE while doing a distance learning course at the University of Gloucestershire.

Dr Ramanujam, who worked with mental health patients in Birmingham and Solihull, was called in by her tutors who were concerned by the shoddy essay she submitted.

They warned her not to use other people’s work as her own, explained how she should correctly reference academic sources, and ordered her to do the work again.

But the second essay contained more material copied from the online website.

The General Medical Council hauled Dr Ramanujam in front of a disciplinary hearing, who decided her misconduct meant her fitness to practise had been impaired.

They imposed a 12-month suspension.

“This is a serious case of dishonesty where you clearly knew what you were doing,” the GMC panel told her. “We consider that such behaviour on your part demonstrates a complete lack of probity.

“The panel has determined to suspend your registration for a period of 12 months.”

At the hearing in Manchester last month the GMC heard how the psychiatrist was enrolled on the Certificate of Professional Studies in Awareness of Cognitive Behavioural Practice course at the University of Gloucestershire in September 2008.

The following July she submitted her coursework for the qualification.

Tutors soon realised that parts of the work had been copied from the Royal College of Psychiatrists website, and from a student’s paper submitted to the University of Birmingham in June 2009.

They called her for a meeting to the discuss the assignment. Dr Ramanujam said she had made genuine mistakes and had not understood how to correctly reference her work.