A NSW surgeon has been suspended for six months after being found guilty of instances of malpractice against 13 patients, including a surgical error that led to a patient dying in hospital.
Dr Liu-Ming Schmidt was found to have operated on the wrong part of a patient’s colon, as well as missing a bowel cancer tumour while treating a woman during a rushed colonoscopy.
Schmidt admitted she failed to notify the patient and his family after making a major surgical error. Supplied
Schmidt was suspended by the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal on Friday, with the tribunal finding Schmidt had spent as little as five minutes performing colonoscopies at a health practice in Albury-Wodonga, on the NSW-Victoria border.
In the findings, the Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) described the November 2019 case of a 79-year-old man where Schmidt made a “catastrophic error” that led to his death less than a month later, where she operated on the wrong part of the man’s colon when she formed the opening.
“She caused a complete mechanical bowel obstruction so that the stoma was not capable of passing faecal material,” evidence from the HCCC said.
It also found Schmidt failed to properly check in with the patient after the operation, despite the patient being an elderly, acutely unwell patient who had just undergone a significant surgical procedure.
“But most egregious, in our opinion, is Dr Schmidt’s failure to then closely monitor the patient after the operation,” the tribunal’s decision read, saying Schmidt did not find out about her error until more than a week after the operation.
Schmidt admitted she did not provide a proper explanation to the patient and his family and failed to tell the patient an error had been made.
The patient first arrived at Albury Hospital on November 7, but died on December 2.
In another case concerning a female patient that Schmidt first treated in 2017, she failed to spot a large abnormal mass in the caecum, the beginning of the large intestine, despite the patient showing several symptoms related to bowel cancer, including abdominal pain and iron deficiency anaemia.
She failed to spot the mass in five colonoscopies, including one in February 2022, but a sixth performed by a different doctor found it on May 11, 2022.
“By the time the adenocarcinoma was discovered by Dr John, it was 55mm in diameter. This type of cancer could not have grown to this size in only three months,” the evidence said.
Schmidt also admitted to rushing colonoscopies, which increases the chance anomalies being missed, on at least eight occasions and failed to capture proper images during 10 colonoscopies.
The HCCC’s medical expert also expressed concern that her colonoscope had not reached the caecum during several procedures. The caecum must be accessed for a complete colonoscopy.
The tribunal initially sought to suspend her for a full year, but noted that she had taken steps to improve her procedures and record-keeping, which had been observed by colleagues.