Doctor struck off for groping patient’s breasts
A DOCTOR who groped a patient’s breasts after she was admitted to hospital with chest pains has been struck off. Dr Syed Bukhari – who moved from Pakistan to work in the NHS – molested the 28-year-old woman twice in two days.
The unnamed patient being treated for chest pains and palpitations was left embarrassed and distressed by the incidents at Wishaw General Hospital in Lanarkshire.
Bukhari, 35, also gave her his email address and told her: ‘We’ll be friends for ever.’
But the patient 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 with his college student wife in 2010, was reported to police but the charges against him were found not proven following a trial at Hamilton Sheriff Court in 2015. However, he was ordered to face a disciplinary tribunal by the General Medical Council.
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) 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 hearing was told the loss of his medical career would mean he could be deported by the Home Office.
The incidents occurred in July 2013 when the woman, known as Patient A, had been admitted to casualty.
She was in bed wearing pyjamas when Bukhari – who had been at the hospital for 14 months – closed the curtains around her to examine her, lifting up her pyjama top.
Patient A said he cupped her breasts and moved his hands in a circular motion as though he was ‘massaging them’. He then moved his hands up her legs even though she told him there was no pain there. She told the hearing: ‘Dr Bukhari moved his hands to the top of my thighs, inside my pyjama shorts.’
He visited her again the same day and gave her his email address so that she ‘could keep in contact with him’.
The next day the woman was waiting to see a heart specialist when Bukhari arrived at her bedside. She said he ‘massaged’ her neck, ‘examined’ her breasts and pressed her legs, again cupped her breasts and asked for her email address, saying: ‘We’ll be friends for ever.’
Following the allegation Bukhari, of Inverness, was suspended but got a job with NHS Highland after wrongly saying it had been resolved.
He denied wrongdoing and said that in Pakistan it was common for doctors to give email addresses to patients.
He was found guilty of groping the woman and misleading colleagues at NHS Highland.
MPTS panel chairman Paul Curtis 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.’