BITE ME: 'Joke gone bad' gets Alberta doctor suspended and on the hook for $27,000

An Alberta doctor who bit a nurse on the arm and declared that “I need a uterus” when calling for a chaperone to examine a female patient has received a reprimand and a month-long suspension from practice. Dr. Keith Oneil Martin, a family physician who served as medical director at the Slave Lake Medical Centre from 2014 to 2018, was also ordered to pay close to $27,000 in investigation and hearing costs and required to complete a course on ethics and professionalism. He is awaiting another hearing, scheduled for October 5, for an appeal to a decision in another case, in which Dr. Martin was accused of hitting a female patient on the head. The hearing tribunal has issued a decision of not guilty of professional misconduct in this case, which stemmed from an alleged emergency department incident in 2013, when the patient was being assessed and treated for a head trauma from a slip and fall. In its decision in the biting case, the hearing tribunal at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta noted that the nurse who had filed the complaint acknowledged it was a case of a “joke gone bad.” According to the nurse, she had jokingly said “bite me” in response to a comment from Dr. Martin. In turn, Dr. Martin bit her on her upper arm through her scrubs and the sleeve of a thick hoodie, leaving a circular bruise on her arm. A co-worker took a photograph of the bruise. Read: Winnipeg doctor hit with licence cancellation and $100,000 in fine and costs Dr. Martin apologized immediately after the incident and followed up with a letter of apology, which he sent to the nurse through the hospital administrator. But the nurse told the hearing tribunal that she continued to feel bullied and unsupported at work. In his defence, Dr. Martin explained that the atmosphere in the Slave Lake emergency department—where he had worked since 2003—was collegial and, at times, doctors and nurses played jokes on each other. Dr. Martin, who was a nurse before he went to medical school, admitted that he had said “uterus, I need a uterus” on more than one occasion in the emergency department. But he stopped using the phrase after being admonished by a male nurse. A requirement to have a chaperone for female patient examinations was put in place by the CPSA after it received a complaint about Dr. Martin allegedly striking a female patient in the head. That chaperone condition was rescinded earlier this year, after the hearing tribunal ruled that the evidence provided by the patient was not reliable. In the appeal hearing scheduled for October, the tribunal will examine whether or not it had erred in its application of the test of the patient's credibility and "standard of proof based on a balance of probabilities," and whether it had reached an unreasonable conclusion in its decision. Read: Suspended: Psychiatrist deemed patient paranoid yet fed him QAnon links and conspiracy theories

BITE ME: 'Joke gone bad' gets Alberta doctor suspended and on the hook for $27,000

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