LONDON – An Indian surgeon working in the British National Health Service (NHS) has been suspended for concocting a story about his Gujarat-based mother’s death because he was worried about failing his surgical exams.
Sandeep Kukreti, a specialist in trauma and orthopaedics at the Basildon Hospital, lied about his mother’s death ahead of his professional exams in February last year.
Kukreti, who qualified from Gujarat university in 1990, has now been suspended from practising for four months after being found guilty of misconduct by the General Medical Council (GMC).
A report of the hearing by panel chairman John Donnelly said: “Your fitness to practise is impaired by reason of your misleading and dishonest misconduct. You told the panel you accepted your behaviour at the time was deplorable. Your serious breach of good medical practice involved dishonesty over a period of two weeks”.
A GMC hearing was told that Kukreti was given four days of special paid leave from his job in January 2010 after stating that his father was seriously ill and he needed to travel to India.
He later called the hospital to say he would not return to work for another two days. In reality, he was still in the country and revising for the exams he had failed on four previous occasions.
Kukreti was due to take the exam on February 7, in Bristol.
On February 4, he called the manager of the Intercollegiate Specialty Boards, which ran the exams, to say his mother, not his father, had died and he would have to postpone the exam.
