GP free to return to work after suspension for booking false appointments 

A GP who was suspended after she falsely booked appointments to allow time to collect her children can now return to work. 

Dr Helen Eisenhauer’s fitness to practise was found to be impaired in December 2025 after a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) hearing, a punishment some GP leaders described as ‘excessive’.  

The salaried GP, who has worked at Stenhouse Medical Centre in Nottingham since 2018, booked afternoon face-to-face appointments with two patients even though she had undertaken telephone consultations with both earlier that day.  

Upon being challenged on this by a GP partner, she made a retrospective entry in one of the patient’s medical records falsely stating she had carried out an examination, the hearing established in December. 

In a review hearing last month, the MPTS found Dr Eisenhauer’s fitness to practise to be no longer impaired. It therefore revoked Dr Eisenhauer’s suspension with immediate effect, meaning she can return to ‘unrestricted practise’.  

During the tribunal, she explained that on 17 July 2024 she had been scheduled to finish at 4.45pm and she needed to leave the surgery to collect her children by 6pm. She booked face-to-face appointments first with one patient, then another, at 4.30pm. On 19 July, after a partner had noticed ‘anomalies’ in booking arrangements, she made the entry in the second patient’s record. 

The tribunal said she did not accept she acted dishonestly when provided the opportunity at two internal meetings held in August 2024. She also did not admit knowingly entering false information in her self-referral to the GMC in September 2024. However, by the time of the tribunal, she had fully admitted to this. 

The 2025 tribunal had determined her ‘dishonest actions’ had ‘put patients at risk’ which meant that ‘her conduct fell so far short of the standards reasonably to be expected of a doctor as to amount to misconduct’. 

But when Dr Eisenhauer was suspended, some GPs suggested the ‘excessive’ punishment could have been instead managed internally while others said her behaviour was a product of the GMC’s ‘adversarial’ disciplinary model.  

In the May review hearing, counsel Ms Harriet Dixon, representing the GMC, said the ‘onus’ was on Dr Eisenhauer to prove she now posed a low risk to public protection. The MPTS concluded the risk of repeating her actions had ‘significantly reduced’, meaning there was ‘now no current risk’ to public protection. 

The MPTS said the tribunal was ‘satisfied she has now developed significant insight’, and it noted testimony from her colleagues who ‘confirmed they wished Dr Eisenhauer to return to the practice’.  

‘The Tribunal considered this to be a significant step in addressing remediation. Dr Eisenhauer’s dishonest conduct had involved the practice, its partners, staff and patients and to engage with them and address those issues with a view to returning to work was demonstrative of significant insight and remediation’, it said.

Pulse has approached Stenhouse Medical Centre to comment.