Fitness to practise - Bad doctors deserve no protection

Legal notices were inserted in newspapers on January 3 to indicate that the High Court had confirmed the decision of the Irish Medical Council (IMC), following a fitness to practise inquiry, to erase the name of Dr Prem Chandra Kumar Chhetri from the Irish medical register. Although Dr Chhetri was registered to work in Ireland, the IMC refuses to state whether he ever actually practised medicine in this country.

Dr Chhetri, who suffers from cataracts, performed a series of botched procedures in Britain.

After a litany of errors at the Mid Staffordshire General Hospital during one 11-day period in 2003, he informed the British General Medical Council that he intended to work abroad while he was being investigated in Britain, but he did not state where he was going.

Following lengthy inquiries into his work during 2006 and 2007 the BGMC found Dr Chhetri guilty of professional misconduct and impaired fitness to practise. As a result, he was removed from the British medical register in the summer of last year. He knew that he suffered from poor eyesight as a result of cataracts in both eyes, but he continued to perform surgery in disregard for the processes of regulation and registration of the BGMC. He thereby endangered his patients.

The investigation learnt that while acting as a locum registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology he inserted packing into a woman’s rectum instead of her vagina in an effort to stop the bleeding after a hysterectomy, and he had failed to use a speculum or a sponge forceps.

While performing a caesarean section he damaged a patient’s bladder, and another doctor had to complete the surgery and repair the damage. In another instance, a woman patient was found to have a gaping wound that was bleeding and a blood clot had formed after a C-section. She had to be re-stitched and given intravenous antibiotics. Dr Chhetri also reportedly botched the stitching following an episiotomy. The sutures had to be removed and the suturing completed by an experienced midwife.

A complaint must be made to the IMC before it holds a fitness to practise inquiry. Even though the IMC conducted it own inquiry and removed Dr Chhetri from the medical register, it refuses to comment on whether he actually worked in this country, because it has a policy of not commenting on individual practitioners.

Such an attitude may be understandable in relation to individuals who are considered fit to practise, but not in relation to those who are deemed unfit. The silence of the IMC, the Health Service Executive and the Department of Health is only likely to further undermine any residual confidence in our health service, especially in light of the recent catalogue of mistakes in relation to cancer diagnoses and the earlier highly publicised obstetrical problems in Drogheda.

People not only have a right to know, they have a need to know if they have been exposed to such medical incompetence.

Who are the IMC, HSE and the department trying to protect by their silence — the disgraced doctor or themselves? It certainly is not the public.