Indian-origin doctor refuses to help patient despite repeated calls in UK

London: An Indian-origin senior doctor in the UK has been accused of dereliction of duty in attending to patients in a number of cases.

Subhash Jasoria, 67, is accused of behaving "like a bystander" as a 78-year-old woman collapsed outside a shop in London and later refused 10 further requests for help in reviving her at North Middlesex University Hospital here.

The unnamed elderly woman eventually made a recovery despite the incident, which took place in August 2013.

The India-born specialist anaesthetist, with more than 35 years' experience in the field, is appearing before the UK's Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester.

He is also accused of failing to properly treat a woman while working at London Women's Clinic, 'The Daily Telegraph' reported.

It emerged during the hearing that Jasoria had resigned from his job at Middlesex Hospital but was in the last days of three-month notice period when the August incident occurred.

"When I got there, resuscitation was going on. I saw Jasoria standing in front of the shop doing nothing, like a bystander, and I heard someone shouting, 'where is the anaesthetist?' Jasoria shouted towards me and said, 'she's here', " a female junior colleague of Jasoria known as Dr C said in a statement read at the hearing.

"I took over from him and asked Jasoria to help us as the senior anaesthetist and he refused to help me and said, 'it's not my problem'. I said, 'you are the registrar, you need to help', but he refused again. I repeatedly, ten times, asked Jasoria for help and there was no help," she said.

She said Jasoria shouted at her in front of the whole team and said, "if you can't manage airways you have no business being here".

The hearing was also told that earlier that year, Jasoria had refused to intervene when he was bleeped by a consultant on a busy intensive care unit who needed help with a patient in cardiac arrest in A&E (Accident & Emergency).

When challenged, Jasoria allegedly said, "It's irrelevant if I'm busy or not because it isn't my job to assist."

"It is his case that he wasn't obliged to go even though he wasn't busy because he was needed to be on-call cover for any emergency which might arise in the obstetrics department.

It is the GMC's case that this was a simple refusal for no good reason," said Nigel Grundy, Counsel for the UK's General Medical Council (GMC).

In the case at the London Women's Clinic in June 2013, Jasoria is accused of failing to conduct a pre-operative assessment of a "Patient B".

She eventually suffered a fit and fell into a critical condition where her body was starved of oxygen for a number of minutes.

Jasoria admits failing to record the results of a pre-operative assessment with Patient B and failing to record her carbon dioxide readings, and telling Dr C to "get out of the way" but denies all other allegations.

The tribunal hearing continues with a result expected later this month.