Flemish Minister of Welfare Caroline Gennez (Vooruit) has decided to remove a doctor from specialist training at the UZA University Hospital in Antwerp, despite a special commission recommending a second chance.
According to reporting by Het Nieuwsblad, Gennez decided to remove the doctor from a training program in pathological anatomy, which examines physical samples to diagnose illnesses. She refers to several incidents, negative evaluations and a "risk to patient safety."
Professors at UZA reported 15 cases in which they found errors in how the doctor performed his work, ranging from mistakes in analysing tumour size to delaying the examination of a sample, forcing a patient to remain under anaesthesia for a prolonged time.
The reports mention one instance where the doctor arrived at the hospital inebriated and an unspecified incident which led to a complaint with the Order of Physicians. The doctor denies all allegations.
Conflicting advice
The accreditation commission of the Department of Care, which oversees the specialisation training in Flanders, advised removing the doctor from the training.
The lawyers for the doctor filed a complaint with a second commission, the Advisory Commission for Specialist Medicine and Practitioners, citing several procedural mistakes and positive internship reports. According to the complaint, several of the negative reports were filed months after the events happened, and the people responsible for filing the reports were part of the commission giving the negative advice.
The Advisory Commission did not evaluate the performance of the doctor, but did agree with at least several complaints regarding procedural mistakes. It deemed that it was unclear if UZA had given the doctor a chance to improve and learn from mistakes and advised letting him continue his specialisation in a different department.
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As the two commissions gave contradicting advice, the decision was brought to Minister Gennez. She decided to follow the initial advice to remove the doctor from the training program due to poor performance.
