A senior surgeon has been allowed to return to practice medicine after abandoning a patient on an operating table during surgery to engage in sexual relations with a nurse in a nearby operating room.
Consultant anaesthetist Suhail Anjum, 44, was discovered ‘in a compromising position’ with another nurse at Tameside General Hospital in 2023.
The father-of-three was caught tying up the cord of his trousers, while his colleague had her undergarments on display, when the pair were surprised by another nurse.
A disciplinary panel has now found that Dr Anjum’s ‘deplorable’ actions amounted to serious misconduct, but concluded that as there was a ‘very low risk’ of them being repeated.
It ruled that a written warning should remain on the doctor’s registration for two years, saying his fitness to practise medicine was not impaired.
Married Dr Anjum – who said he felt ‘shame and guilt at this horribly embarrassing incident’ – is now back working in his native Pakistan.
However, he has expressed hopes of returning to the UK to work in the NHS again.
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing in Manchester was told that Dr Anjum left the patient, who was having keyhole surgery to remove a gall bladder, because he knew that his colleague – referred to as Nurse C – was likely to be nearby’.
He told colleagues he needed a ‘comfort break’, the panel was told.
But a second nurse who went to prepare medical equipment in a different operating theatre was ‘shocked’ to come across the pair engaging in ‘sexual activity’.
Dr Anjum admitted all the allegations, saying the incident occurred during a period when he and his wife ‘were not connecting as a couple’.
‘I have let down everybody,’ he said.
‘It was the lowest point of my career.
‘I am genuinely sorry and shamed and fully recognise the seriousness of my behaviour.
‘It was a one-off error and I will never repeat this behaviour.
‘I would like to ensure the panel that it will not happen again, but that does not take away the guilt and embarrassment.
‘I have only myself to blame.’
Panel chair Rebecca Miller said Dr Anjum had ‘engaged in sexual activity within a public workplace setting, whilst on duty, in the middle of an operation’, thereby breaching good medical practice.
He had ‘left a vulnerable patient unattended in the middle of an operation and placed his own interests before those of his patient and colleagues’, as well as harming the reputation of the medical profession.
But the panel accepted it had been ‘a momentary lapse of judgement rather than a sustained pattern of behaviour’.
The patient was unharmed, while Dr Anjum had been ‘honest’ and ‘shown genuine remorse’.
Mrs Miller said a public warning was necessary ‘to ensure that public confidence is maintained in the profession and the regulatory system’, as well as acting ‘as a deterrent’.
Dr Anjum qualified in Lahore in 2004 and began working in the UK in 2011, holding positions in Bristol, Milton Keynes, and Dartford before moving to the Tameside and Glossop Integrated Trust in 2015.
He left the Trust in 2024 and worked in Liverpool before returning to Pakistan.
So, this man commits grave wrongdoing but maintains his job – what a farce, but then doctors look after their own, and he would have had to kill someone in a way that couldn’t be construed as a mistake before they took away his licence.
And what about the nurse? What it boils down to is that they both wanted a quickie without being found out. Hopefully, she will now be advised to keep her knickers on at work at all times.
More suction, please, nurse!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 