A JERSEY GP who prescribed himself pharmaceutical-grade heroin has been told that he cannot practise for six months.

Dr Michael Vincent has been suspended from the doctors’ register with immediate effect by a General Medical Council fitness-to-practise panel.

The panel made its ruling after hearing evidence about the lengths to which the doctor went to obtain strong painkillers. On one occasion, the panel heard, he collected a prescription for a patient three hours after he had pronounced him dead. The panel, which heard the case in London this week, found that there was evidence to suggest that in the period from 1 October 2006 to 30 November 2006, Dr Vincent wrote 27 separate prescriptions for the painkiller pethidine and ten for diamorphine (heroin), of which only five reached the patient that the prescription had been written for.

Dr Vincent, who practised at the White Lodge Medical Centre, in Grosvenor Street, admitted that he had given himself 54 doses of pethidine and 30 doses of diamorphine. The panel said that it had considered a more severe sanction, but had decided that a six-month suspension was appropriate after reading the positive testimonies of patients and fellow doctors.