Surgeon, doc to be quizzed over clash

Star: PETALING JAYA: A cardiac-thoracic surgeon and a medical officer who clashed in an operating theatre at the University Malaya Medical Centre about two months ago will appear before a hospital committee of inquiry next week.
According to an operating theatre staff member, who declined to be named, the surgeon who had blood on his surgical gloves slapped a medical officer from the anaesthesiology department.
The female doctor then struck back at the surgeon, breaking his spectacles.
Following the incident, several medical officers informed the hospital management that they did not wish to serve under the surgeon, who is also a professor at the university.
They also insisted that action be taken against the surgeon because his behaviour was unbecoming, and he had put the medical officer at risk of possible infection from the blood on his gloves should the blood carry any virus.
“We will resolve the matter,” UMMC director Prof Datuk Dr Mohd Amin Jalaludin said yesterday.
“There is no such thing as doctors not wanting to work with the surgeon.
“The surgeon has returned after a long medical leave; and we will have both doctors before the committee.”
The surgeon, when contacted, declined to comment on the case, saying that he was not authorised to make press statements.
Medico Legal Society president R. Arunachalam said any doctor with a history of losing his cool required psychiatric evaluation.
He said a surgeon who loses control in an operating theatre might misuse the scalpel and injure others.