{"id":200362,"date":"2025-06-20T16:59:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T16:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/200362\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T16:59:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T16:59:11","slug":"bury-doctor-suspended-after-33-specific-concerns-raised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/200362\/","title":{"rendered":"Bury doctor suspended after 33 ‘specific concerns’ raised"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Dr Sunita Khambra worked as a consultant anaesthetist at the\u00a0Northern Care Alliance NHS<\/a> Foundation Trust (NCA), which includes Fairfield General Hospital, Rochdale Infirmary, Royal Oldham Hospital and Salford Royal Hospital, from April last year before resigning a few months later in August.\n<\/p>\n

\n A tribunal, which took place on June 10, found that Dr\u00a0Khambra \u201ccreated a risk to public protection\u201d following numerous performance issues raised by her colleagues.\n<\/p>\n

\n In January, the trust submitted an online referral form from NCA to the General Medical Council (GMC), stating\u00a0that Dr Khambra had \u201cfailed to demonstrate the competencies required for independent consultant practice in anaesthesia\u201d and had required ongoing supervised practice.\n<\/p>\n

\n It stated that 33 specific concerns had been raised by a range of colleagues, which Dr Khambra had denied before resigning from her role to find employment<\/a> elsewhere.\n<\/p>\n

\n The referral was raised after NCA\u00a0was contacted for an employment reference and concerns were aired\u00a0that Dr Khambra had not been transparent about the issues she had while\u00a0working at the trust.\n<\/p>\n

\n Dr Khambra was informed that she was required to undergo a performance assessment as a result and that failure to comply could result in her case being referred to the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service\u00a0to consider her non-compliance.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Dr Khambra disagreed with the concerns raised and informed the trust<\/a> that she was going to relinquish her GMC licence to practice, saying that she did not agree to the performance assessment and that she intended to leave the UK and return to India.\n<\/p>\n

\n She did not respond to several emails asking her to confirm this in writing though.\n<\/p>\n

\n In her absence, the tribunal considered whether Dr Khambra had failed to comply with the GMC’s direction and whether there was a good reason for this.\n<\/p>\n

\n On behalf of the GMC, Ms Gilsenan submitted that Dr Khambra has \u201ccreated a risk to public protection because the GMC cannot investigate the numerous performance concerns raised which were considered serious enough to warrant issuing a Health Professional Alert Notice (HPAN)\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\n This is a system where notices are issued to inform NHS bodies and others about health<\/a> professionals who may pose a \u201csignificant risk of harm\u201d to patients, staff or the public.\n<\/p>\n

\n There was also \u201cno objective evidence\u201d provided by Dr Khambra to suggest that her non-compliance posed a reduced risk to the public.\n<\/p>\n

\n The tribunal concluded that Dr Khambra had failed to provide any \u201cvalid justification\u201d for her ongoing refusal to undergo the performance assessment.\n<\/p>\n

\n It acknowledged Dr Khambra\u2019s belief that she was being unfairly targeted but had provided no supporting evidence to substantiate this claim or to excuse her non-compliance.\n<\/p>\n

\n Dr Khambra has now been suspended from the GMC for 12 months and her case will be reviewed in the future.\n<\/p>\n

\n She is entitled to appeal the decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr Sunita Khambra worked as a consultant anaesthetist at the\u00a0Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA), which includes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4316],"tags":[105,4348,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-200362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114716761717962456","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}