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</td> </tr> <tr><td class="content_subtitle" align="left"> Fri, Nov 13, 2009
The Straits Times </td> </tr> <tr> <td height="15">
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By K.C. Vijayan
A GYNAECOLOGIST suspended from practising here for two years after his affair with a patient has had the book thrown at him in Britain as well.
Dr Yeong Cheng Toh, 44, was in London when the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) sanctioned him in February 2008 for his affair, during which he changed his lover's medical records and revealed details about another patient to her.
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</td></tr></tbody></table>In January this year, a British panel also suspended him from practice for a year from the London fertility clinic where he had found employment.
The former consultant gynaecologist at KK Women's & Children's Hospital appealed against the suspension in a London High Court but lost. He has taken his case to a three-judge court and it is due to be heard next March.
Although Justice Philip Sales' judgment was given in July, no grounds were published until Dr Yeong filed his appeal over a month ago. The appeal date was set on Monday.
The doctor left his wife and three children for Britain in December 2005 to escape his lover's harassment, according to the written judgment. When he ended the affair in July that year, she bombarded him and his wife with text messages, phone calls and visits.
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Photo: ST, Bryan Van Der Beek</td> </tr> </tbody></table>
During their relationship he had given her more than $90,000 as she had threatened to tell his wife about their affair.
Dr Yeong found work at the CRM Fertility Clinic in London in December 2005. Around that time, his ex-lover complained to the SMC.
He told his new employer that he was under probe in Singapore.
He pleaded guilty to four charges of professional misconduct and, in February last year, the SMC said he was being suspended for two years.
Justice Sales noted that despite that suspension, Dr Yeong never stopped working as a doctor.
In January, his case went before a disciplinary panel of the UK General Medical Council (GMC) and he was meted the maximum penalty of a year's suspension.
Justice Sales said the panel went for the maximum penalty to send a strong signal that Dr Yeong's conduct had been 'abhorrent and disgraceful'.
It had noted that his conduct was 'not easily remediable'. He had breached his duty to the vital doctor-patient relationship by carrying on the affair for two years.
Lawyer Robert Kellar, for Dr Yeong, argued that the one-year suspension was excessive and produced testimonials from Dr Yeong's colleagues and patients describing him as caring and empathetic.
But the judge felt it was important to send 'a clear public statement of the importance of the fundamental standard of professional conduct in relation to relationships between medical practitioners and patients'.
Justice Sales also rejected the lawyer's argument that the panel had improperly gone for parity with the SMC decision instead of imposing its own view.
Mr Kellar cited the case of the former National Neuroscience Institute chief Simon Shorvon, who had been sacked for ethical breaches which the GMC did not follow with its own inquiry. The SMC also failed when it applied to a UK court in 2006 to have the GMC proceed with the inquiry.
Dismissing this, Justice Sales said the 'SMC's views reflected a common approach to such matters in both Singapore and the United Kingdom, as the SMC itself pointed out'.
The panel did not refer to the SMC's decision in suspending Dr Yeong.
'On the contrary, it made it very clear that it was forming its own views on the question of sanction,' he said.
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