A JUNIOR doctor who exclaimed "you've got a nipple piercing" to a nurse before tweaking it was merely helping a colleague, the General Medical Council heard yesterday (Wednesday).

Dr Mobinulla Syed, of Harley Crescent, Harrow, examined the woman's chest during a night shift after expressing concern about her persistent cough at the Morriston Hospital in Swansea.

But when her bra slipped, exposing her right nipple, Syed allegedly exclaimed: "You've got a nipple piercing" before touching the exposed ring with his finger, it is said.

The hearing was told Dr Syed then pointed to her stomach and asked "have you got a piercing there?"

Giving evidence as a defence expert yesterday Dr James Hill said there was a "culture" of colleagues assisting each other at the Morriston Hospital.

Dr Hill, a former consultant cardiologist from Queens Hospital, Burton-upon-Trent, said: "Clearly as you become more well known in the hospital you tend to attract people, colleagues and friends of colleagues who have developed medical conditions.

"That may simply just be a consultation, it may imply an examination of their body, it may imply a test or a prescription or any combination of such.

"I think it's really quite common and the culture, sadly, is increasing, especially in this situation when somebody's on a night shift, how does somebody find a doctor?"

Dr Hill said hospital medical staff were often pushed for time when trying to visit their own GPs.

"The nurse would have been faced again with trying to see her own doctor or going to the A&E, which is not as easy as it sounds."

Dr Hill also supported Syed over his lack of a chaperone when he examined the nurse's chest and instead relied on another nurse being outside the room.

"It appears to me that this was not an unreasonable compromise in a sense that the door was open, the consent was implicit, it was given by nurse A in the first place and the fact that she started to undress in the first place."

Earlier Syed told the GMC he did not know why he touched the piercing.

"To be honest I am not sure why I did that, I think it is an inquisitive reaction," he said.

It is said Dr Syed's conduct was inappropriate, an abuse of his professional position, were indecent and sexually motivated.

Syed, who now works as a clinical fellow in plastic surgery for the Barts and London NHS Trust based at The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, denies the charges.

The panel is currently deliberating on the charges faced by Syed.

If the GMC upholds any of the charges, the panel could find his fitness to practise is impaired and he could be struck off.

The hearing continues.