A SURGEON who broke patient confidentiality in his campaign against a hospital consultant has failed in his court claim that York Hospital dismissed him for whistle blowing.

An employment tribunal sitting in Leeds decided that Kurshid Anwar Karimi had been fairly sacked for gross misconduct because he had accessed dozens of confidential patients’ records without permission and on one day made repeated unsuccessful attempts to access the records of a patient who had died three years earlier.

In one part of their judgement, the three tribunal members say: “What he was doing on both occasions was embarking on a fishing expedition looking for any additional evidence that might substantiate a further complaint against (the consultant) but of which he was presently unaware.”

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He had already made several complaints about the consultant which had not been upheld.

The three tribunal members didn’t decide if he had been whistle blowing when he raised concerns about the way other doctors had treated patients.

They said: “There is evidence as to the lateness of the disclosure and the apparent intention to discredit (a consultant in his department) which calls into question the claimant’s good faith.”

They did decide in their judgement that he didn’t have any facts to back up his claims, “as he frequently asserts of gross negligence, manslaughter or serious malpractice against any other doctor”.

And they dismissed his claims that he had been subjected to racial discrimination during his time at the hospital in the way he had been treated compared to other doctors.

Mr Karimi, 57, of Woodthorpe, was employed by York Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust as a middle grade surgeon in the hospital’s vascular department from 2005 until he was sacked in 2014.

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The tribunal heard that concerns about Mr Karimi’s work meant that his probation period was extended from the usual one year to two years and that for long periods he was restricted in what he could do.

The judgement says that Mr Karimi fitted the description of a doctor whose work was not up to standard and who was not prepared to change his behaviour by himself.

They also heard that an investigation into his conduct took ten months instead of the normal four weeks and five days. “If this served to fuel his mistrust at the trust’s actions, it has only itself to blame,” says the judgement.