A doctor who abandoned a patient mid-procedure to go have sex with a nurse will be allowed to continue to practise, after a medical tribunal found that there was a “very low risk” that the doctor would repeat his behavior, according to British media reports.
Dr. Suhail Anjum was dismissed from a Tameside hospital in Manchester after the 44-year-old was caught in a “compromising position” with a nurse by a colleague when he was meant to be in a surgery in September 2023.
The consultant anaesthetist asked a colleague to monitor the anaesthetised male patient while he went to the bathroom. However, the married father instead went into an empty operating theater with an unnamed nurse, where the pair shared an intimate encounter.
A colleague unknowingly stumbled onto the situation, finding the nurse “with her trousers around her knee area with her underwear on display” and Anjum “tying up the cord of his trousers,” a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing was told.
The tribunal findings
In total, Anjum left the patient unattended for eight minutes and the patient was unharmed. An internal investigation led to Anjum's dismissal from the hospital in February 2024.
Tribunal chair Rebecca Miller said that while the patient was okay, the incident “significant enough to amount to misconduct that was serious.”
Originally from Pakistan, Anjum told the hearing last week he wished to stay and continue practising medicine in the UK - and promised such an incident would not happen again.
“It was quite shameful, to say the least. I only have myself to blame. I let down everybody, not just my patient and myself but the trust and how it would look,” he told the hearing, while describing the encounter as a “one-off error of judgment.”
The tribunal ultimately determined that Anjum “had put his own interests before those of the patient and his colleagues” and the incident involving Nurse C “had the potential to distract Dr Anjum … and he may not have been able to give his full attention to the patient’s care.”
No sanctions were placed on Anjum.