Surgeon in unfair sacking row now an Uber driver
AHEART surgeon who has accepted a cash settlement from the health board he accused of sacking him unfairly is now working as an Uber driver.
Peter O’Keefe, who was a consultant cardiac surgeon at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, was suspended for more than three years before being dismissed after health workers accused him of bullying and harassing them.
An employment tribunal case, which was due to begin yesterday, was called off after Cardiff & Vale University Health Board reached a settlement agreement with him.
He said: “It’s a bitter-sweet outcome for me. It’s an enormous relief not to have the pressure on me any more, but this has gone on so long and I can’t go back to medicine.
“I’ve tried to get work, but I’m the wrong side of 50. I came to the conclusion that the best thing was to give myself a job, so I’ve become an Uber driver, and I’m loving it.”
When Mr O’Keefe was dismissed from his £95,000 a year post in 2015, Cardiff and Vale University Health Board issued a statement which said: “After considering the findings made by an independent inquiry panel and hearing evidence and submissions in mitigation the board of the health board found that Mr O’Keefe’s standards of behaviour in the workplace constitutes gross misconduct within the health board’s disciplinary rules.”
At the time, a friend of Mr O’Keefe’s said: “The allegations against him had nothing to do with his clinical competence as a surgeon. He is a forceful and assertive character. It can be very stressful in an operating theatre, and some people have taken exception to his manner.
“Ten years ago perhaps people wouldn’t have made anything of it.
“A lot of people did make complaints against him, but there was a degree of rounding-up that went on, and some were more keen on complaining than others.”
In January this year Mr O’Keefe wrote an article for the Western Mail in which he said: “I [was] transformed from an outstanding surgeon, developing and introducing cutting-edge treatments and techniques, travelling the world to give lectures, train other surgeons, and support the training of other surgeons in Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom, a surgeon who had just been recommended by his Health Board for a National Clinical Excellence Award, to a pariah, a disgrace, an embarrassment, in just a few short weeks.
“Despite being placed under close supervision by the Welsh Government for its financial management (or more appropriately mismanagement), Cardiff & Vale were able to find, by their own admission, £18,000 per month to employ two surgeons on a temporary basis to do the work that I had been doing, while they undertook an investigation into my conduct.
“That investigation and the subsequent disciplinary process would last over 200 weeks from beginning to end.
“The eventual total bill, paid let’s not forget by the taxpayer, is a matter of speculation but I would be amazed if there was any change out of £1m. That’s quite a bill, a lot of public money.”
The health board was asked for a statement, but has not provided us with one.