Can you think of anything worse than finding out that you’ve consulted and used, or been thinking of consulting and using, a surgeon, a spine surgeon no less, who, the authorities have decided, on the basis of how he’s looked after two of his patients, one of whom has died, needs to go back to Med School again and learn about “The care of the critically ill surgical patient?”
Such a surgeon is Dr Youssef Ghabrial of Merewether – see this media release from the NSW HCCC dated 15 Dec 2014 and this record of proceedings before a Professional Standards Committee.
AND, AND, the authorities have had the information on his treatment of those two patients for almost 5 years before the Media Release.
One of us to sent this email to Jillian Skinner the NSW Minister for Health about all this on 31 Dec 2014 and we got this reply on 14 Jan 2015.
It amounts to, “There there children! Don’t fret. Dr Ghabrial wasn’t “struck off” was he – he couldn’t have been that bad. And, as for the 5 year delay, all the rules, which we think are perfect, were followed. So God’s in his heaven and all’s well with the world.”
What can we say?
We don’t think Dr Ghabrial passes the “squeaky clean” test, do you?