AN EYE doctor has been struck off for a “sustained and repeated pattern of appalling behaviour” including stamping on a colleague’s Dictaphone, calling black agency staff “apes and primates”, and branding elderly patients time-wasters.
Dr Erkan Mutlukan, who worked in NHS hospitals including the Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion in Edinburgh, was banned from working in the UK again after a fitness-to-practise tribunal found he was threatening, rude, aggressive and disrespectful to staff and patients over a two year period from April 2013 to March 2015.
The Medical Practitioners’ Tribunal Service (MPTS) concluded that Dr Mutlukan, who is now based in the United States, posed a potential danger to patients.
It added that he continued to consider himself as a victim of fraudulent and malicious complaints, even dubbing one elderly patient whom he injured with a table “a xenophobic racist hateful Scottish woman”.
The patient's daughter told how Dr Mutlukan, a locum consultant ophthalmologist originally from Turkey, had made herself and her mother feel like "an inconvenience to him" during the consultation in April 2013.
She said he complained that the opticians who had referred the woman "do this all the time and it was wasting time".
Later in the consultation, the tribunal heard, Dr Mutlukan banged on a table with such force that it lurched forward and twice struck the patient, causing her to shout in pain.
In evidence, her daughter said: "My mother clearly did it as a sign of distress. Dr Mutlukan did not say anything...He then bashed the table again and the whole thing happened again...Most people would say sorry but there was none of that."
In September 2013, Dr Mutlukan left a female chemist feeling "physically threatened" after cornering her alone following an earlier dispute over a prescription.
She said: "He said that he was going to report me and get my licence removed...He would not let me speak and he kept telling me not to interrupt him. I felt very nervous and kind of shaky after the incident."
The tribunal rejected claims by Dr Mutlukan that the chemist was racist and "a known troublemaker".
Read more: Complaints about NHS Scotland have more than doubled since 2007
After leaving Scotland, he was involved in a string of altercations.
While working as a locum consultant in southern Wales in June 2014, he unleashed a "torrent of abuse, swearing and aggression" on another consultant for using a Dictaphone while he was making a telephone call.
The ophthalmologist said: "Dr Mutlukan jumped up from his desk and came to the side of me and behind my desk. He caught me by my shirt near my neck and hit the Dictaphone off my hands.
"The Dictaphone fell on the floor and then he tried to stamp on it...I tried to leave but he was holding his fists up in the corridor near the door, pretty much blocking my way out of the office.
"At the same time he was swearing and threatening me. I cannot remember the exact words he used but they were threats of physical violence. It was quite a frightening situation."
On another occasion the tribunal heard that the police had to be called after Dr Mutlukan became so aggressive with hospital switchboard staff that they were left "upset and distraught".
The MPTS also concluded that Dr Mutlukan had been racially abusive in email correspondence with a black employee at his medical agency, DRC Locums, in December 2014, referring to staff as "dishonest primates and apes" and telling him to "keep your third world jungle".
Dr Mutlukan insisted the references were "non-racial and related only to the sub-human primitive behaviour that was demonstrated by the employees of the agency". This was rejected by the tribunal.
The watchdog said Dr Mutlukan's behaviour over the two years had been "shocking and deplorable", both towards colleagues and to "elderly, frail and vulnerable patients".
It added: "This conduct included the improper use of physical force on one occasion, and racially derogatory language in another. The impact of his behaviour was to cause his victims (patients, doctors and others alike) to be upset, fearful and threatened."
Dr Mutlukan was erased from the UK medical register with immediate effect. He has until the end of August to appeal.
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