What is needed to stop a doctor from practicing medicine?                                                    

What follows are my comments in part  to Dr. Dr. Amitabh Chauhan who admitted that he sexually abused someone without that person’s  consent.

“You’re a doctor. “You’ve admitted to committing an inappropriate sexual episode with a colleague — a young medical student who turned to you for mentoring, and who was indisputably drunk and semi-conscious when the sex act you committed on him which you claim was consensual.”

“You’ve never acknowledged unprofessional and unethical behaviour. You have, allegedly, a history of sexual impropriety. You drugging and sexual assaulting a woman.  At your trial (a 44-day trial in 2014 that was heard before  judge-alone whose verdict was given and another doctor, a close friend, were found not guilty on charges of that still stuns many people.  You were also acquitted on a separate charge of sexual assault from several years earlier, that complainant coming forward when she learned about the later accusations against you.”

Your “licence to practise was revoked by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario where the level of proof is less than a criminal court and your request for reinstatement of the certificate was denied by the professional body after reviewing trial transcripts, a psychiatric report and a risk assessment report. The college didn’t believe that you could practise medicine with decency, integrity and honesty.”

“And yet, the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board overruled the College’s decision and subsequently ordering it to reinstate your medical certificate that permits you to continue practicing medicine.”

“As a medical resident, you were both a student at McMaster University and an employee of the city’s two hospital systems, Hamilton Health Sciences and St. Joseph’s Healthcare.”

“The university commissioned a third-party risk assessment report but, though agreeing to co-operate, you refused to be interviewed by individuals retained to conduct an occupational health and safety assessment. That report described you as having “a history of problematic sexual behaviour” that raises serious questions regarding your judgment, attitudes and insight. Your decision-making may “have been disinhibited by alcohol intoxication and negative attitudes.”

“However, the probability of future problematic sexual behaviour “would appear to be low” if you refrained from substance abuse, continued in your “stable and happy marriage” and were “motivated to avoid sexual relationships at work.”

“Both hospitals refused you permission to rejoin the residence program where you had completed only seven months of a five-year residency where you have not been at that hospital for more than six years.”

Please note that a residency program is required by doctors working in a hospital.  It is really  a ’training on the job’ program.

“A joint committee of senior doctors from each hospital concluded that not guilty at trial was by no means an exoneration of your conduct and judgment.”  It just means that the prosecutor couldn’t  prove his guilt.

“The committee took the position that you were the sole author of your misfortune and that the misconduct established your “complete unsuitability” to return to the residency program in teaching institutions, particularly among female colleagues and female patients. Further, letters from 16 residents who were received by the hospitals, expressing their concerns about your conduct and possible reinstatement”

“The only favourable assessments for reintegration into the program came from a psychiatrist hired by your defence counsel and a forensic psychiatrist who never examined you and who is a colleague of your psychiatrist spouse.”

“And notwithstanding all of that information, an Ontario Labour Arbitration Awards panel last month upheld your grievance for wrongful termination by the hospitals, leaving it for the hospitals to find a resolution, including the possibility of returning to work as a plastic surgery resident at that institution.”

What does it take for a labour arbitration panel to concede that so severely compromised a doctor should be sent packing? 

They said, “When the evidence put before us is distilled to its essence, it is insufficient, on any labour relations standard, to justify termination from employment on a just case standard.”

They went on to say to the doctor, “Your name is Dr. Amitabh Chauhan and any reasonable person should be appalled that all hospital doors haven’t forever been shut in your face.” unquote

Arbitration boards and other quasi-judicial entities are not courts. However, they have already determined that an acquittal is a high standard of proof if a labour arbitration board can independently weigh the seriousness of a doctor’s sexual misconduct and not the criminality of it. This is the same barbed-wire fence that time and time again has snagged complainants of sexual assault when that same board could afford greater credence to the complainant and her complaint.

This board panel didn’t see it that way. This board accepted the position of the Professional Association of Residents of Ontario, which represented Dr. Chauhan at the hearing, that the whole hornet’s nest of a case was a straightforward dispute between employer and employee. “He has learned from his mistakes,” according to the decision of the Board that also said, “He has regretted the shame and stigma his actions brought upon his wife and children, made changes to his lifestyle, and was ‘committed not to make such mistakes again.” (See my note at the bottom of this article)  

Who says these kind words? They are. Dr.Chauhan, himself and the two psychiatrists, one of whom never even seen Dr. Chauhan.

Sexual crimes are serious crimes. Now I can accept the fact that many of these offenders who committed such crimes don’t actually commit those crimes again, but let me ask you this rhetorical question. 

If you were a principal of a school and you learned that a teacher in another school molested a child in that school and was subsequently dismissed from that school, would you hire that teacher to teach students in your school?   

NOTE:  Elizabeth Wettlaufer was a registered nurse in the province of Ontario, in Canada.  She got hooked on drugs while on the job at Caressant Care nursing home, She made many mistakes that could have been fatal to the elderly patients she was looking after. She was subsequently fired. She then got a job at another nursing home for the elderly and she didn’t make mistakes this time. Instead, she murdered eight of them by overdosing them with insulin.  

Would you buy a car from a dealership that was found guilty of defrauding its past customers?  

I am not suggesting that Dr. Chauhan would sexually abuse another person in the future but his conduct after he admitted doing that crime leaves me with some doubt.