Careless oncologist gets reprimand and five warnings

A former internist-oncologist at Radboud university medical center in Nijmegen has been reprimanded and five warnings for negligent treatment of cancer patients.

A former patient and eleven surviving relatives filed separate complaints against the woman. The Regional Disciplinary Court considered the complaints in seven cases partially founded.

The doctor was reprimanded for withholding potentially curative treatment from several patients and making an incorrect entry in a medical record. She received the five warnings because, among other things, she did not have a tissue test done to confirm colon cancer.

She also paid too little attention to a patient’s calcium value and was not registered as a doctor for a short time. The woman also received a warning because she too often pursued a wait-and-see policy.

In addition, she had about 10,000 unread messages in the hospital’s internal messaging system, so she sometimes had an outdated scan of, for example, a tumor in front of her, writes Broadcasting Gelderland.

Despite the twelve disciplinary complaints, the Regional Disciplinary Court does not believe that the woman poses a risk to individual health care. According to the Board, there is no pattern of “serious negligence attributable to the internist”, so the woman may continue to practice her profession.

The doctor has not previously had any disciplinary measures imposed on her and she was judged on what she knew or should have known. “The Board does not take into account the knowledge afterwards of how the patient’s illness progressed in each case, because the internist also did not have that knowledge at the time of the action,” the Board said.

Bereaved Jeroen Geertsen calls the verdict unsatisfactory. His father was under doctor’s care and complained that he was tired, but according to the oncologist that was part of his illness, the regional broadcaster reports. It later turned out that he had highly elevated calcium levels in his blood, which caused him to become dehydrated.

The woman was hospitalized by Radboudumc in August 2019 inactive posed. The hospital also wanted to fire her, but that was rejected by the subdistrict court judge and later also by the court of appeal because there were insufficient indications of culpable conduct. The doctor is no longer working at the hospital.