A chiropractor misinformed paramedics about an elderly patient’s broken neck due to ‘stress’, a medical panel ruled.
Arleen Scholten, who used the title ‘Dr’ despite not being medically qualified, was allowed to keep her job when she faced a General Chiropractic Council conduct committee.
The widow of John Lawler, 80, said she was ‘devastated’ by the decision.
Father-of-three Mr Lawler died in hospital the day after being left a quadriplegic when he suffered ‘irreversible’ spinal damage during an appointment with Mrs Scholten in August 2017.
The pensioner visited her private Chiropractic 1st clinic in York after suffering a leg injury from falling through a garden chair.
Minutes into the appointment with his wife Joan by his side, he screamed out in pain, telling her: ‘You’re hurting me, I can’t feel my arms.’
His inquest heard the treatment table was dropped and raised ‘without warning’. It had been intended to manipulate his spine but left the former Barclays bank manager ‘like a rag doll’.
Mrs Scholten said his ‘mouth started turning a bit blue’ and she performed rescue breaths, as ‘a stroke was the only thing that came to mind at that point’.
She managed to get the retired bank manager to a chair before asking her receptionist to call an ambulance.
When crews arrived, she wrongly told paramedics that he had suffered a possible stroke.
The committee heard she failed to mention using the ‘drop technique’ to the 999 operator. One paramedic said Mr Lawler would have been ‘immobilised’ if she had known it was a ‘trauma’ incident.
But it dismissed his death as ‘the entirely unforeseeable consequence of the treatment’.
Members said the vital misleading information given to call handlers and paramedics was the result of an ‘acute stress reaction’ by Mrs Scholten.
The committee concluded: ‘Mrs Scholten was suffering from an acute stress reaction at the time of this unprofessional behaviour and accordingly that behaviour was not deliberate but rather inadvertent.’
The decision angered Mr Lawler’s family, with his widow saying she is ‘devastated’.
His son David, 57, an accountant, said: ‘Mrs Scholten told lies about her treatment and had she been honest, all the evidence suggests that the paramedics would have treated my father differently and he probably would have lived.’
In October 2017 Mrs Scholten was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter by North Yorkshire Police over Mr Lawler’s death, but released without charge.
The inquest in November 2019 heard she had falsely advertised herself as ‘Dr’ after earning a Doctor of Chiropractic degree in Canada. But under British rules, she should have been calling herself ‘Mrs’.
MORE : Chiropractor ‘broke patient’s neck’ during treatment for sore leg
MORE : Elderly man ‘fell ill during chiropractor visit and died the next day’
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