Married Dr Kwame Somuah-Boateng (pictured leaving his hearing) will keep his job despite his affair with the MS sufferer

A senior NHS doctor who had an affair with a patient and promised that sex would be 'good' for her illness is to keep his job after blaming his indiscretions on 'professional burnout'.

Married Dr Kwame Somuah-Boateng, 43, told the woman, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, that intercourse with him would stimulate the muscles in her legs.

He subsequently had sex with her in his hospital sleeping quarters saying: 'Trust me I'm a doctor - it will help you to get your sensitivity back.'

During their illicit romance, Somuah-Boateng took his mistress who is in her 30s to a christening and vowed to marry her and have a son by her - even though he already had a wife and two daughters.

He claimed having sex would help her 'regain the feelings in her vagina' and would 'help her pelvic floor muscles because they were weak.'

He said it would help her 'to feel normal - feel like a woman.'

The six month fling ended when the woman - known as Patient A - discovered she might be pregnant only for him to warn her his wife would 'kill' the baby, it was said. When she thought she had miscarried he tried to have sex with her again.

She discovered what Dr Somuah-Boateng had told her about sex and her condition was false when she went for a subsequent medical appointment for her MS.

In a statement she said: 'He continuously badgered me for sex. He wanted to take me to hotels and he always insisted that having sex would get me back to normal. He told me to trust him, as he was a Doctor and knows everything about MS.

'He kept saying things like 'I'm going to do anything in my power to make you feel better'.'

At the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, in Manchester, Somuah-Boateng was found guilty of misconduct but escaped with a 12 month suspension after he apologised for the affair.

Somuah-Boateng took his mistress who is in her 30s to a christening and vowed to marry her and have a son by her

He said he had since undergone counselling and had attended a course on maintaining Professional Boundaries.

The affair began in July 2012 after Patient A was admitted to the A&E department at Croydon University Hospital in South London when she complained of being unable to feel her legs or feet properly.

Somuah-Boateng, a urologist had escorted Patient to a colleague for an MRI scan and when she was devastated to subsequently discover she had MS he began comforting and advising her about her condition.

He later obtained her address from medical records and invited her to a Christening. She told the hearing: ' In the car on the way back he told me that I had nice legs and asked me to pull my dress up so he could see more of them and I said no.

'He tried to kiss me and put his hand between my legs but I said no. He was calling me every day. I didn't recognise myself as being in any danger. He came over and asked me how I was and he was massaging my feet and my legs telling me I needed to stimulate them.

'He said that having sex would help my MS in terms of getting feeling back so it was the right thing to do. I just wanted to feel normal again, like all other women.

'I was on my own and angry, confused and scared with no friends of family who understood the condition and no one to talk to.

'The first time I had sex with Kwame he said to me: 'trust me I'm a doctor - it will help you to get your sensitivity back.' He was giving me the support I needed and my emotions were up and down. I wanted to have sex with him because I thought it helped. We had sex twice in the on call doctors sleeping quarters at the hospital.

'If I had known that what was happening to me was something dreadful, that something dreadful had happened to me I would have had the police at my door. He told me sex was good for my condition numerous times.

Boateng said he had since undergone counselling and had attended a course on maintaining Professional Boundaries

'Initially I thought that it was going to help me get my feelings back, I just wanted to be normal again. He was telling me he was going to help me, I thought he was the only one who could help me, the only one I could talk to about the condition because he was telling me he understood it.

'At the time I thought the relationship was normal. He made me feel safe and he made me think that I couldn't speak to family or friends about my condition and told me not to look thinks up on the internet.

'I thought: 'wow isn't it great to have your own personal doctor looking after you'. Now I feel like I was groomed into a relationship with this man.' I felt dependent on him. He began to tell me: 'I love you, I want to marry you, I want to have children with you.'

Somuah-Boateng of Mitcham, Surrey, admitted an affair but denied telling Patient A that sex was 'good for her.' In 2015 at Croydon Crown Court he stood trial for attempted rape and assault by penetration but was cleared by a jury.

In a statement he said: 'There is not even a single text or message from me to her saying that her MS will improve by her having any sexual relationship with me. I completely and utterly deny that I ever said that.

'It doesn't therefore make sense that I would 'prescribe' her sex as therapy for her MS. I never also said things like 'Trust me I am your doctor'.

'She was the one always asking me to come over, always wanting sex and always wanting to go out for a drink, meal or something.'

He claimed at the time he was 'very difficult circumstances in his personal life' and was in a 'period of professional burnout. He claimed he had addressed those issues through counselling, mediation, mindful thinking and 'taking exercise.'

MPTS panel chairman Dr Nigel Westwood told him: 'There is no prior or subsequent history of inappropriate relationships with patients and there is nothing to indicate that clinically you are anything other than a competent doctor.

'You have demonstrated a willingness and capacity to learn from your past wrongdoing and you have developed a degree of insight, albeit incomplete and late in coming.

'Your misconduct, although serious, is not fundamentally incompatible with continued registration as a doctor and that the public interest can be addressed by a period of suspension of adequate length.'