Sleep expert faces ruin for having sex with insomniac

A SLEEP disorder specialist faces being struck off after he admitted having sex with an insomnia sufferer at an Edinburgh surgery.

Dr Ewan Crawford, 53, embarked on a five-year relationship with the woman, despite knowing that she suffered from physical and psychological problems.

During their affair, he also treated the patient's husband, a retired police officer, and two sons at the Murrayfield Medical Centre.

He admitted all the allegations at a hearing of the General Medical Council in Manchester yesterday and will now face a hearing to determine his fate.

Details of the GMC's case against him and the patient's evidence will be heard in private over the course of the next nine days.

The divorced father-of-three has already been suspended from the medical register and is currently not allowed to work as a doctor in the UK.

Dr Crawford, a specialist in both sleep disorders and diabetes, was suspended from his job in January 2008 after both NHS Lothian and the GMC received the complaint.

The GP first had sex with the woman, referred to as Patient A, in 2001 while she was registered at the practice as his patient.

On one occasion, in or around September 2005, he admitted to the fitness to practice panel of the GMC that he engaged in sexual activity with Patient A at the medical centre.

The doctor also failed to inform his colleagues about the sexual relationship, which ended in September 2006.

In May 2004, he prescribed zopiclone – a drug used to treat insomnia – to the woman.

Crawford has been clinical director of the North West Edinburgh Local Health Partnership, which overseas an area of about 136,000 people, with 19 GP practices and a string of health centres. At the hearing yesterday, panel chairman John Donnelly said the facts were proved and the panel now needed to determine if Dr Crawford's fitness to practice was impaired because of his misconduct.

The hearing continues.