Thomas Kwan

Introduction

Thomas Kwan is a former UK general practitioner whose name was erased from the General Medical Council (GMC) register with immediate effect on 17 September 2025, after a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) tribunal found his fitness to practise impaired by reason of his conviction for attempted murder. Kwan, who worked at the Happy House Surgery in Sunderland and lived in Ingleby Barwick, Stockton-on-Tees, is serving a prison sentence of 31 years and five months for injecting his mother’s partner, Patrick O’Hara, with a poison during a fake Covid-19 booster appointment at the family home in Newcastle in January 2024. His is a conviction case, and the tribunal chose the most serious sanction available to it: erasure, the register’s term for removal.

Background Information

Kwan qualified in 1996 at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and at the time of the events was practising as a general practitioner at the Happy House Surgery in Sunderland; his GMC registration number is 4298427. Newcastle Crown Court heard at sentencing that he was born in Hong Kong, moved to the UK at 13 to attend boarding school, and went on to study medicine at Newcastle University. By the time of the offence he was 53, described in court as a wealthy doctor living in a large detached home in Ingleby Barwick with his wife and young son.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated vs. alleged. Thomas Kwan admitted attempted murder and was sentenced in the Crown Court; the conviction and sentence are court-record facts. Accounts of motive and planning come from the prosecution and the sentencing judge and are attributed here. The erasure is an MPTS tribunal decision.

On 22 January 2024, Kwan went to the St Thomas Street home his mother shared with O’Hara posing as a community nurse called “Raj Patel”. He wore a face mask, hat, black wig, false beard and moustache, had tanned his skin for a fake ID, and spoke with a broken Asian accent during a 45-minute visit in which he carried out blood checks and health surveys. The visit had been set up through forged NHS letters; the day before, Kwan had driven to Newcastle in a car fitted with false number plates and stayed at a hotel under false details. At the end of the visit he injected O’Hara, 71, in the arm. O’Hara immediately felt “excruciating pain”, was told it was a normal reaction, and the visitor left in a hurry.

Prosecutors believed the substance was iodomethane, a pesticide. O’Hara contracted necrotising fasciitis, spent five days in intensive care and five weeks at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary, where sections of dead flesh were removed from his arm, and needed reconstructive surgery, skin grafts, physiotherapy and treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Prosecutor Peter Makepeace KC said Kwan had spent months planning the “audacious” attack and was “obsessed” with money and motivated purely by greed. The court heard he was angry that his mother, Wai King Leung, also known as Jenny Leung, had made a will in 2021 granting her partner of 21 years a share in her home, and had installed spyware on her computer years earlier to track her finances. Police found other poisons at his home, including ingredients for making ricin, and the judge noted his “morbid obsession” with poisons.

Kwan admitted attempted murder after the first day of his trial and, on 6 November 2024, was jailed for 31 years and five months. Mrs Justice Lambert called the scheme an “audacious” and extensively planned attempt to “kill a man in plain sight”, said he gained entry in “the most calculated and callous way”, and described him as a “dangerous offender” posing a high risk of serious harm.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The GMC brought the case before an MPTS tribunal sitting from 15 to 17 September 2025, held online with Kwan attending by telephone from HMP Frankland in County Durham. Kwan claimed his actions were unrelated to his work as a doctor and said he had had an “unblemished” career. The panel said his actions “breached a fundamental tenet of the profession” — that doctors “should act with integrity and within the law” — found an “absence of remorse” and said he had brought the profession into disrepute. It was “evident”, the tribunal said, that he had “used his medical knowledge and professional experience in order to gain the trust” of his victim “and to carry out the crime”, and his description of the injection as an “isolated unprecedented mistake” showed a “profound lack of insight and remorse”.

The Northern Echo reported that Kwan had criticised O’Hara for appearing on television, suggesting there “does not appear to have been any lasting effect” on him, and had “sought to blame others” for the position he found himself in. Panel chair Gerry Wareham said Kwan “has not provided any evidence of genuine remorse, reflection or remediation”, and that his willingness to use his medical skills during the incident indicated a clear risk of harm to future patients. The tribunal directed erasure with immediate effect; Kwan, who had earlier said he wished to “sincerely apologise”, made no representations about the sanction.

Current Status

Kwan was struck off the medical register on 17 September 2025, the erasure taking effect immediately. MedicWatch’s record lists the case as a conviction/caution case, records impairment as impaired and the outcome as erasure, with the hearing running 15–17 September 2025. He remains imprisoned at HMP Frankland, serving 31 years and five months. No appeal against the erasure is reported in the published sources.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The erasure ends Kwan’s medical career in the United Kingdom: his name is removed from the GMC register and he may not practise medicine. The tribunal’s reasoning fixed the character of the case for him professionally — the finding that he had used his medical knowledge to gain his victim’s trust, and the chair’s conclusion that this willingness indicated a clear risk of harm to future patients. The attack itself carried lasting consequences beyond the register: the court heard O’Hara was left with PTSD and described himself as a “shell” of his former self, and had since separated from Kwan’s mother.

Sources

BBC News, “GP who tried to kill man with poison struck off,” September 17, 2025 — source
BBC News, “Disguised GP jailed for inheritance row poisoning,” November 6, 2024 — source
The Northern Echo, “Poison plot GP Thomas Kwan struck off from register,” September 2025 — source
MedicWatch, “Thomas Kwan — Struck off the register · 17 September 2025,” September 17, 2025 — source