Eva Carneiro, the Chelsea doctor demoted after José Mourinho reacted furiously to her treating the midfielder Eden Hazard in the closing minutes of Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Swansea, could have a case to sue the club for constructive dismissal.

Nick Wilcox, a lawyer at the specialist employment firm Brahams Dutt Badrick French, said Carneiro appeared clearly to have been fulfilling her duties as a doctor to attend Hazard, who was down on the pitch apparently injured, particularly after the referee, Michael Oliver, beckoned to the bench for attention.

Chelsea’s stripping from Carneiro of her matchday and training session duties with the team, and Mourinho’s public criticism of her – which has prompted a storm of criticism from the Premier League Doctors Association – appears “disproportionate,” Wilcox said, and could amount to “public humiliation” which breaches Chelsea’s duties as her employer. He pointed to the law governing employment relationships, which says: “The employer must not, without reasonable and proper cause, conduct itself in a manner calculated and likely to destroy or seriously damage the relationship of trust and confidence between employer and employee.”

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Wilcox said Chelsea’s conduct appeared to have been “heavy-handed” and “disproportionate,” particularly given General Medical Council guidance that doctors must put their patients first, and could amount to a breach of their employers’ duty.

“This does look like an arguable case for constructive dismissal,” Wilcox said. “That is the territory you would be investigating as a lawyer if you were acting for her.”

The GMC is not commenting on the specific case of Chelsea and Carneiro but a spokeswoman pointed to its guidelines, which govern the conduct of doctors and state as their first principle: “Make the care of your patient your first concern.”

The GMC guidelines also make clear to doctors they must: “Take prompt action if you think that patient safety, dignity or comfort is being compromised.”

Wilcox said it seems clear that with Hazard on the ground and Oliver beckoning the Chelsea bench twice to give him attention, Carneiro could have been in serious breach of her professional duties as a doctor had she not attended to him.

With Chelsea already down to 10 men, following the dismissal of the goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, Mourinho was incensed because he wanted to keep Hazard on the pitch, and argued that he could see the player was not seriously injured. Wilcox said he did not believe Mourinho can have had the qualifications to make that assessment and Carneiro had a duty to examine Hazard.

Carneiro has not commented beyond a Facebook post on Sunday to “thank the general public for their overwhelming support” after Mourinho’s criticism, and it is not yet known if she has sought legal advice about her demotion. Wilcox said Chelsea would struggle to argue her post was itself a breach of her duties as an employee, because it was not inflammatory or a criticism of Mourinho. “It seems a fairly benign response,” he said.

In its statement expressing “universal and total support” from Carneiro’s medical colleagues, the Premier League Doctors Group described removing her from the Chelsea team bench as “unjust in the extreme”. The statement said: “It is a huge concern that Dr Carneiro has been subjected to unprecedented media scrutiny and a change in her professional role, merely because she adhered to her code of professional conduct and did her job properly.”

Chelsea have not commented on what they have described as “an internal staffing matter”.