Arabic version: تعليق تسجيل جرّاحة في نيو ساوث ويلز بعد شكاوى مرضى
According to ABC News, surgeon Dr Liu-Ming Schmidt has been suspended from registration for six months after the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal found her guilty of professional misconduct following proceedings brought by the state’s Health Care Complaints Commission.
The proceedings involved 13 patients and multiple complaints. The tribunal heard that Dr Schmidt failed to identify a large cancer during a 2022 colonoscopy; another surgeon found it in a repeat procedure three months later.
In a separate 2019 emergency operation at Albury Hospital for a bowel obstruction, the tribunal heard Dr Schmidt made a “catastrophic error” by bringing out the wrong end of the bowel when forming a stoma. The patient died nearly four weeks later. A NSW coroner had previously ruled that the death was due to complications partly arising from a surgical error.
The tribunal also found Dr Schmidt failed to provide appropriate management and care in another bowel-obstruction case. It heard she admitted that, between 2015 and 2021, she did not take adequate time to perform or capture images during colonoscopies at Wodonga Hospital and failed to keep appropriate patient records and notes.
Her conduct relating to one patient led Safer Care Victoria to recall almost 2,000 of her colonoscopy patients, with about 1,000 receiving repeat procedures. Dr Schmidt was ordered to pay the commission’s legal costs and complete further training and supervision once her suspension ends.
