Doctor fondled patient’s breasts and told her: We will be friends forever

Watchdogs slam medic’s predatory behaviour

A DOCTOR who groped a patient’s breasts and gave her his email address so they could stay in touch has been struck off.

Dr Syed Bukhari molested the 28-year-old woman twice in two days.

She was being treated for chest pains and palpitations when the 35-year-old targeted her while on his rounds.

The patient was left embarrassed and distressed by the incidents at Wishaw General Hospital in Lanarkshire.

She said: “I felt very uncomfortable and nervous. I was quite tearful and upset. You put your trust in a doctor.”

Bukhari, who arrived in Britain from Pakistan with his student wife in 2010, was reported to police but the charges against him were found not proven after a trial at Hamilton Sheriff Court in 2015.

However, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester found him guilty of the charges in June and at a further hearing this week he was struck off the medical register.

The incidents occurred in July 2013 when the woman, known as Patient A, was admitted to A&E.

She was in bed wearing pyjamas when Bukhari – who had been a doctor at the hospital for 14 months – shut the curtains to examine her.

Patient A said: “Dr Bukhari asked me to sit back then proceeded to lift up my pyjama top exposing my breasts.

“He then moved his hands from the centre of my chest and proceeded to cup both my breasts with his hands and moved his hands in a circular motion.

“It felt as though Dr Bukhari was massaging them. He then pulled the blanket back, which had been covering my bottom half, and placed his hands on my shins and underneath my calves and asked me whether it was sore here.

“I informed him that there was no pain in my legs. He moved both his hands up my legs again, asking whether there was any pain.

“Dr Bukhari moved his hands to the top of my thighs, inside my pyjama shorts.”

She said he visited her again the same day and gave her his email address so she “could keep in contact with him”. The next day the woman was waiting to see a heart specialist when Bukhari arrived, asked her why she had not been discharged and closed the curtain around her bed again. She said he again cupped her breasts and asked for her email, saying: “We’ll be friends forever.” Bukhari, from Inverness, was suspended but later got a job with NHS Highland after wrongly claiming the allegations had been resolved.

MPTS panel chairman Paul Curtis said striking Bukhari off the medical register was the only appropriate sanction.

He said: “Following the first incident of inappropriate touching, you then sought Patient A out the following day, aware that she had not made any complaint about your behaviour the previous day, which made her more vulnerable.

“This displays predatory behaviour on your part and considerably increases the seriousness of your actions.”