Sunday April 14, 2013
Female doctor is actually a guy
By ALLISON LAI
[email protected]
Double identity: Supt Soh showing a photo of the man who posed as a female doctor in Malacca.
MALACCA: With his soft and feminine features, the petite figure comes across as a prim and proper female medical doctor.
Always clad in a baju kurung and headscarf, “Dr Ika” the name the doctor used managed to con several private clinics here with fake certificates and had himself hired as a locum at RM45 an hour.
He was actually a jobless man who did not even finish his nursing course in two institutions in Selangor and Johor.
Said to have given “extra attention and tender loving care'' to male patients, his cover was recently exposed when he supposedly called a male patient on his handphone after hours.
The patient's wife found out and complained to the clinic last Monday and internal investigations followed before the police were alerted.
Malacca commercial crimes chief Supt Soh Hock Sing said a special team was set up to observe and gather information before an undercover operation was mounted.
“We decided to act fast as it involved patients' lives. So, one of our officers posed as a patient seeking medical treatment at the clinic. The man behaved like a real woman doctor and examined the officer. He even prescribed some medicine,” he said yesterday.
The team raided the clinic and questioned the “doctor” before arresting him at 6pm on Thursday.
Initial investigations showed that the 26-year-old from Sabah, who lived in Ampang, was also a dropout from an engineering course in an institution in Sabah.
“We believe he used the same trick in Perak and Pahang before coming to Malacca in January,” Supt Soh said.
“Patients who think that they had been given prescriptions by this fake doctor are advised to stop taking them,” he said, adding that clinics hiring locums should be more careful with their background checks in the future.
