Indian doctor in UK suspended over misconduct

LONDON: Angamathu Arunkalaivanan an Indian-origin gynaecologist suspended from practicing medicine for a year for groping a patient's breasts three years ago.

He is accused of being found guilty of misconduct by a British panel. He was also found guilty of failing to offer a chaperone or make a record of the breast check in the patient's notes.However the tribunal decided not to strike off Arunkalaivanan from the UK medical register in view of the medical services he can offer to the public.

"I left the room that day and I just, it just felt so wrong. I could just not get the examination out of my head," Patient A, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had told the panel.

"The panel accepted that this is an isolated case and that the breast examination was clinically indicated. However, the manner in which you conducted the breast examination on Patient A was clearly sexually motivated," Sandra Sturdy, chair of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service panel in Manchester, said this week.

"Your conduct in undertaking a breast examination...was a serious breach of trust between patient and doctor and amounted to serious misconduct... The panel has found that your actions have brought the medical profession into disrepute, and that you have breached fundamental tenets of the profession."

Sturdy said the panel had determined that "the need to uphold proper professional standards and public confidence in the profession would be undermined if a finding of impairment was not made".

Arunkalaivanan, who qualified as a doctor from the University of Madras in 1988, runs a private practice at BMI Priory Hospital in Birmingham and is employed as an NHS consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist in Birmingham City Hospital.

The consultation involving Patient A took place at BMI Edgbaston Hospital in Birmingham in October 2010.