RUGBY BLOODGATE HEARING:THE MATCHDAY doctor at the centre of the "Bloodgate" fake injury scandal has been cleared to practise medicine again.

Dr Wendy Chapman cut the lip of Harlequins player Tom Williams to cover up a bogus blood injury and later lied about her role in the event.

A British general medical council (GMC) disciplinary panel ruled Chapman’s fitness to practise was not impaired despite her actions, which it said were not in the best interests of her patient.

She was suspended by the GMC last September and could have been struck off at the hearing in Manchester.

Panel chairman Dr Brian Alderman said Chapman was guilty of “serious misconduct” but she was “severely depressed” at the time.

She would not have acted in the way she did but for her “altered state of mind”, he said.

“The panel has concluded that, while at the times these events occurred your fitness to practise was impaired, looking forward, your fitness to practise is currently not impaired,” he added.

“You do not pose any risk to patients or the public. The panel accepts that there is a public interest in retaining the services of a good doctor.”

Alderman said the panel would consider today whether it was appropriate to issue a warning to the doctor.

Legal representatives for Chapman said she would not comment on the hearing until then.

Williams’s supposed injury meant a specialist kicker could come on for Harlequins in the dying minutes of last year’s Heineken Cup quarter-final tie against Leinster, who held on to win 6-5.

Last week, Chapman told the GMC panel she was “ashamed” she gave in to pressure from Williams, who begged her in the changing rooms to conceal that, minutes earlier, he had bitten into a fake-blood capsule on the pitch.

She said she was then “horrified” that she went on to lie to a European Rugby Cup (ERC) hearing that the injury was genuine and supported the club’s initial statement of innocence.

Alderman said both the lip cutting and the giving of dishonest evidence were “wholly unacceptable”.

Her decision to cut the lip with a stitch-cutter was a “spur-of-the- moment error of judgment which nevertheless was still serious”.

It was a difficult and unique situation in that a fit and well patient asked to effect an injury, but as an experienced accident and emergency consultant she should have been able to refuse the request, he said.

He said Harlequins had devised a “united front” at the ERC hearing with the intention of misleading the committee of inquiry.

“You may well not have liked adhering to the unified approach but nevertheless you did so,” said the panel chairman.

“The panel has concluded that your behaviour in this case is sufficiently serious to amount to serious misconduct.”

The panel accepted expert evidence that Chapman would have disclosed sooner the true events in the changing room but for her depression.