A doctor who left a patient under general anaesthetic during surgery to engage in sexual activity with a nurse has been found to pose a “very low risk” of repeating such misconduct, a medical tribunal has ruled.
According to a British online newspaper, The Independent on Tuesday, Dr. Suhail Anjum, a 44-year-old married father of three, was discovered in a compromising position with the unnamed nurse by a shocked colleague at Tameside Hospital in Greater Manchester.
The consultant anaesthetist had told staff he was taking a bathroom break, but instead went to another theatre, where the incident occurred.
Instead, Anjum went to another operating theatre – used partly as a storage room – at the hospital in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, where sexual activity took place with Nurse C on September 16, 2023.
The matter was reported to the management, and Anjum was dismissed in February 2024 following an internal investigation.
Last week, he told a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service disciplinary tribunal he wanted to resume his career in the UK and relocate with his family after they had moved to his native Pakistan, where he worked as a doctor.
On Monday, the tribunal determined that Dr 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”.
Tribunal chairwoman Rebecca Miller said his actions, while they did not harm the patient’s safety, were “significant enough to amount to misconduct that was serious”.
However, she was satisfied that Dr Anjum was determined not to repeat his past misconduct and considered the risk of repetition to be “very low”.
Miller said: “The tribunal considered that members of the public and the profession would understand the high level of scrutiny to which Dr Anjum had been subjected, and that a finding of serious misconduct would weigh heavily upon him.
“The tribunal was satisfied that this public finding of serious misconduct was sufficient to maintain public confidence in the profession and proper professional standards, and that there was not a necessity to make a finding of impaired fitness to practise for that purpose.”
No sanction will be imposed on the doctor, and the hearing will reconvene in Manchester on Tuesday to decide whether to issue a warning on Anjum’s registration.
