GP who entered incorrect data in death certificates suspended for 10 months

A GP who entered incorrect data while completing death certifications will be suspended for 10 months, a fitness-to-practise tribunal has ruled.

At the time of the events that led to the suspension, Dr Lea Cramsie was practising as a salaried GP for a practice in Glasgow which provided care to people living in nursing homes, according to documents released by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS).

The MPTS said that the allegations were related to Dr Cramsie completing medical certificates of cause of death and ticking the box to confirm the deaths had been reported to the procurator fiscal ‘when she knew they had not’; this would exclude the deaths from being selected for review by the Death Certification Review Service. The documents said that the allegations related to ‘31 occasions’.

In Scotland, the procurator fiscal has a duty to investigate certain deaths, such as those which are sudden, suspicious, accidental or unexplained, with specific guidance for GPs on when a death should be reported.

The initial concerns were raised with the GMC on 26 June this year by the deputy medical director for primary care for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

The referral to the GMC was further to a local investigation by the health board which arose from ‘concerns that had been raised around death certificate completion’.

The GMC acknowledged that Dr Cramsie had described herself as ‘dealing with what she considered to be a disproportionate workload of death certificates’. The regulator submitted that Dr Cramsie’s workload ‘might provide some explanation for the misconduct’, but that the evidence from other practice members did not suggest that the workload was considered ‘unusually onerous’.

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Source: Pulse, 9 October 2026