{"id":322809,"date":"2025-12-18T13:22:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T13:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/322809\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T13:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T13:22:08","slug":"suspended-drunk-warrington-surgeon-blamed-workload-and-stress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/322809\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspended drunk Warrington surgeon blamed workload and stress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The panel was told Dr Vatikutti bought a Chinese takeaway on his way home and then drank vodka at about 20:30 or 21:00 BST and went to bed before midnight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He woke at about 07:15 the next day but missed breakfast because he was late for work, with the tribunal told the doctor &#8220;did not believe that he was under the influence of alcohol or that his performance was impacted&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The surgeon said he accepted he would not have been safe to drive but &#8220;felt OK, and no-one complained&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After blood tests, the surgeon was found to have had a blood alcohol level of 48mg\/dl.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dr Vatikutti, who qualified in India but has been working in the NHS for the past 10 years, told the tribunal he felt &#8220;guilty&#8221; and was &#8220;very sorry that he had gone to work&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The tribunal found his behaviour constituted very serious misconduct, adding he had shown &#8220;very little insight into the risks his behaviour posed to patients, colleagues and the reputation of the profession&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The tribunal concluded a suspension for nine months was the appropriate and proportionate response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The panel was told Dr Vatikutti bought a Chinese takeaway on his way home and then drank vodka&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-322809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}