The decision over whether or not Dr Ali Shokouh-Amiri can continue to practise medicine is unlikely to be made this year.
The General Medical Counsel is appealing a decision by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service that found his fitness to practice was not impaired after he had admitted and been found guilty of a number of failings.
The appeal hearing started last week before the UK’s High Court (Administrative Court). it was originally scheduled to last for three days but a further hearing has now been scheduled for 1 December.
If the matter is concluded then, it’s likely that the decision will be announced at a later date.
Dr Shokouh-Amiri was a given a formal warning by the MPTS earlier this year after he admitted and was found guilty of a number of serious failings – including removing the ovaries of two women without their consent, carrying out intimate examinations without a chaperone on multiple women, and failing to arrange treatment for another patient.
The incidents all occurred when Dr Shokouh-Amiri was a consultant at the Medical Specialist Group in Guernsey – with six of his patients making more than 100 complaints between them about his work and behaviour.
But the tribunal found that that the doctor’s “fitness to practise” was “not impaired”, and he was allowed to continue working.
The General Medical Council decided to appeal that decision, telling Express at the time that it had “decided to exercise its powers to issue an appeal in the case of Dr Ali Shokouh-Amiri on grounds including that the tribunal erred in a number of their factual findings, and the tribunal was wrong to conclude that the doctor’s fitness to practise was not impaired”.
The obstetrician and gynaecologist was recently working as a consultant at Southend University Hospital in Essex, but if the appeal is successful he could be struck off.