Jailed for six years, surgeon who lied to get job
A ROGUE surgeon who lied to get an £84,000-a-year hospital job and was then investigated over a high death toll of patients has been jailed for six years.
Scots-educated Sudip Sarker, 48, duped a hospital interview panel into believing he had performed 51 out of 85 keyhole bowel operations while working alone. In reality, it was only six.
One of the interviewers, consultant surgeon Nick Purser, told Sarker’s trial that the colorectal surgeon was a ‘pathological liar’.
On Friday Sarker, who studied in Glasgow, was found guilty of fraud by false representation, in relation to the job interview at Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, Worcestershire.
Sentencing him yesterday at Worcester Crown Court, Judge Robert Juckes, QC, said Sarker had exaggerated his ‘level of experience and competence, with disastrous consequences’.
The medic was suspended a year after taking up the post in summer 2011 after a whistleblower raised concerns about his clinical competence and high patient complications rate.
NHS bosses called in the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) to investigate up to ten patient deaths, before West Mercia Police was contacted.
The force passed evidence relating to the deaths of four patients to the Crown Prosecution Service, which decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute for gross negligence manslaughter.
It is understood that the deaths of those four patients – William Jones, 84, Daphne Taylor, 81, Jean Thomas, 80, and Sidney Millin, 68 – will be the subject of inquests this year.
Grandfather Mr Jones, of Bewdley, Worcestershire, was diagnosed with bowel cancer but died of sepsis a week after surgery on May 30, 2012.
Mrs Thomas, a widow from Tanworth-in-Arden, Warwickshire, was operated on by Sarker a fortnight earlier after being diagnosed with colon cancer.
She was subsequently readmitted on four occasions due to complications before she died on September 15, 2012 of multiple organ failure brought on by sepsis.
Mrs Taylor, a mother of three from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, died after an operation on October 19, 2012.
Prosecuting, Jacob Hallam, QC, said Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust had paid out £1,970,574 to 18 claims linked to Sarker and a 19th was ongoing. He said that Sarker, of Broadstairs, Kent, was guilty of ‘abuse of position, of power, trust and responsibility’, leaving a ‘trail of devastation’ in a job ‘he should never have had’.
The RCS found Sarker’s surgical knowledge was ‘significantly below’ the levels expected – with his patient death rates being at least double those of his colleagues.
The RCS also discovered a quarter of his patients developed chronic complications. There was a ten-fold increase in surgery complications, compared with other surgeons.
Mr Hallam said that the RCS team had ‘never in their collective experience’ seen so many concerns about one surgeon. Questioned over the surgical experience disparities, Sarker tried to put the blame on the trust interview panel, who he claimed ‘must have misunderstood me’.
He was suspended in July 2012 and sacked in July 2015, costing the trust £304,000 as he was paid in full during the investigation.
The judge said the trust could not be blamed for appointing Sarker, who had proper references from the Whittington Hospital and the Royal Free Hospital in London.
Quoting a senior Worcestershire hospital surgeon, the judge said the idea that anyone would falsify their clinical experience ‘was so reckless and dangerous, you just do not expect to come across it’.
He also said Sarker had told ‘highly significant lies and grossly exaggerated’ at the job interview.
Sarker is suspended from practising while a General Medical Council probe continues. He will face a proceeds of crime hearing in May.
A West Mercia Police spokesman said: ‘We commenced an investigation into the death of a patient to establish if any criminal actions led to her death.
‘A file of evidence was referred to the CPS in respect to four patients. The CPS deemed there was insufficient evidence to bring a prosecution for gross negligence manslaughter.’
‘Left a trail of devastation’