Doctor Left Patient Mid-Operation to Have Sex with Nurse — Before Colleague Found Them in ‘Compromising Position’

A doctor who left his patient under anesthesia to go have sex with a nurse will avoid a ban from practicing medicine in the United Kingdom, according to new reports.

The BBC, The Guardian, and Sky News reported this week that Dr. Suhail Anjum avoided the most serious consequences during a recent Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing about the 2023 incident, in which he and a nurse were caught “in a compromising position” by a colleague at the Tameside Hospital in the Greater Manchester area.

While addressing the medical panel recently, BBC reported that Dr. Anjum admitted to having sex with the nurse and called the incident “quite shameful.”

“I only have myself to blame,” the doctor, a married father of three, reportedly told the tribunal. “I let down everybody, not just my patient and myself but the trust and how it would look. I let down my colleagues who gave me a lot of respect.”

Dr. Anjum, a consultant anaesthetist, had asked a colleague to look after his patient after putting him under general anaesthetic, telling the coworker that he had to use the bathroom. The anaesthetist was gone for about eight minutes when a nurse walked in on him and another nurse alone in another operating room putting their clothes back on, according to the BBC.

The colleague told the tribunal that she saw the nurse, who remained unnamed throughout the hearing, “with her trousers around her knee area with her underwear on display,” while Dr. Anjum appeared to be “tying up the cord of his trousers.”

Dr. Anjum’s patient was reportedly unharmed while the anaesthetist was away from the operating room, according to The Guardian.

The doctor was fired from the hospital in February 2024 after an internal investigation into the incident, according to the newspaper, while his family moved to his native Pakistan. Dr. Anjum reportedly told the tribunal that he wishes to continue his medical career in the United Kingdom.

According to the BBC, the panel described the incident as “serious misconduct” and said the doctor “put his own interests before those of the patient and his colleagues.” However, the panel reportedly said Dr. Anjum was at a “very low risk” to repeat the incident again.

“The tribunal considered that members of the public and the profession would understand the high level of scrutiny to which Dr Anjum had been subjected, and that a finding of serious misconduct would weigh heavily upon him,” said Rebecca Miller, the chairwoman of the tribunal, according to the BBC.

“The tribunal was satisfied that this public finding of serious misconduct was sufficient to maintain public confidence in the profession and proper professional standards, and that there was not a necessity to make a finding of impaired fitness to practise for that purpose.”