Court to rule on ‘harsh’ sanction

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Independent Newspapers

An anaesthetist has approached the court to serve his sentence, even whilst appealing, after his patient died in a coma.

An anaesthetist who has been suspended from practice after a patient went into a coma – and later died – while he went to the toilet, has launched a Constitutional Court challenge to legislation which dictates that he do his punishment, even if he is appealing against it.

Leon Rheeder, who practises from Crompton Hospital in Pinetown, says this makes his intended appeal to the Medical and Dental Professional Board purely academic because it will only be heard after he has sat out the effective three-month suspension imposed on him in May.

He says this is not in the best interests of his patients and while he does not raise the issue of loss of income in his court papers, which came before Durban High Court Judge Piet Koen on Tuesday, his advocate Steven Mullins pointed out in argument “sometimes it is not necessary to spell out the obvious”.

Rheeder pleaded guilty on May 12 this year before the board’s conduct committee to a charge of failing to ensure that his patient, 70-year-old Ian Fordyce, was monitored during a cataract extraction operation.

In Rheeders’s absence – to go to the toilet – Fordyce, who was under local anaesthetic and sedated, suffered a reaction to the drug Ultiva and went into a coma. He died about a month later.

The board fined him R50 000 and barred him from practising for one year, suspending nine months of that for three years. The effective three-month suspension was to be served immediately.

Rheeder says the sanction is too harsh and he has instructed his attorneys to “note an appeal”.

But, he says, this will not be heard within three months.

And, he says, his constitutional right to access to the court is also denied through the Health Professionals Act, because there was no effective redress as the penalty had to be served in advance of any appeal.

He says the act needs to be amended to change this. “The appeal procedure is a lengthy one… and there is no time limit to consider the appeal.

“I am committed to treating a large number of patients over the next three months. I have arranged for fellow anaesthetists to take over some of them, but I don’t know if they can cater for all. Most of my patients require surgery without delay,” he said.

He said his conduct was “not so egregious that it warranted immediate suspension”.

However, advocate Charles Wesley, representing the chairman of the board and the Health Professions Council, described Rheeder’s conduct as “deplorable’ and said Rheeder was trying to minimise it.

“He has not sufficiently realised the gravity of his conduct,” said Wesley, arguing that Rheeder had little prospect of success on appeal.

“He should have been there (in the theatre) just in case. And he wasn’t.

“He argues that his suspension is not in the interests of his patients. He is here (in court) because he did not look after the interest of his patients.”

Wesley said it might well be that Rheeder would serve out his suspension before the appeal was heard “but that is the intention of the legislature”. Rheeder, as a professional person, had subjected himself the rules and he had no right to now challenge them.

The judge will rule on the matter on Thursday.

Continued here:
Court to rule on ‘harsh’ sanction