A DECORATED paramedic who failed to attempt to revive an unconscious 93-year-old woman on Christmas Day 2010 has been found guilty of misconduct.

Alan Clark MBE, who is also Deputy Church Warden at St Barnabas Church in Woodford Green, decided the pensioner was dead after she stopped breathing even though there was still heart activity.

He shunned a colleague's offer of a defibrillator during the incident at the Birchwood Care Home in Clayhall Avenue, Clayhall, and took little or no action for more than ten minutes before calling a clinical help desk for advice.

Mr Clark, who lives in Buckhurst Hill, eventually asked for his own defibrillator to be fetched, but did not use it and made no efforts to perform CPR before declaring the woman, who has not been named, dead.

A hearing at the Health Professions Council (HPC) rejected his claim that the woman was already dead when he arrived, and decided his fitness to practise was impaired due to his misconduct.

Student paramedic Corinne Zeiderman, who was on the call with Mr Clark, said he did not tell his colleagues what he was doing and just sent her to fetch equipment.

The HPC panel ruled that he had made no efforts to save the woman and there was no evidence she was dead when Mr Clark arrived.

Mr Clark told the hearing sticking to the guidelines would 'cramp his style' in the future, and that patients would lose out.

He also said he had been stressed because members of the woman's family were upset.

The panel had earlier dismissed allegations that Mr Clark had simulated resuscitation to appease the family of a dying patient on an earlier occasion, due to lack of evidence.

Mr Clark started work as a paramedic in 1975 after being made redundant from his job in the building industry and was awarded the MBE in 2007.

In his capacity as deputy warden at St Barnabas he successfully campaigned to have a crumbling war memorial at the church restored and re-dedicated.

He will hear his fate at a later date yet to be announced after the panel ran out of time.

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