Nepal Medical Council (NMC) on Wednesday barred two doctors of Norvic International Hospital from practicing medicine for 30 days for their act of gross medical negligence. 

A full-bench meeting of NMC decided Dr Praveen Nepal and Dr Sailesh Ranjitkar will be barred from their duties for another one month until an experts’ team submits its report on the incident.  

Dr Nepal and Dr Ranjitkar had operated a patient’s wrong leg 13 days ago. The patient Bindu Poudel’s medical file with the hospital shows Dr Nepal operated her right leg while the problem was with her left leg.

To cover the incident of negligence, the hospital made an agreement with the patient’s husband stating the “hospital would bear all costs incurring during the course of her treatment”.

Four NMC officials present at the meeting on Wednesday confirmed the decision. All of them refused to be named in this report.

“The decision can be made public only after further progress. It was decided that a press release will be issued on Friday to make the decision public,” said one of the officials. 

Another official said there was fierce disagreement among the members on the action taken against the doctors of Norvic. “Some were in favour of severe action. Others had maintained that it was just communication gap that happened during the incident and the treatment that the patient got was based on the real medical condition,” said another doctor.   

In the meeting, it was discussed that since the patient did not face any life threatening conditions or had to undergo amputation, some doctors had also said that it will be enough if the surgeons were only warned. 

In their clarification to NMC few days back, the doctors have maintained that they did not make mistake and instead were trying to help the patient. However, they have admitted that not providing prior information to the patient family members was their mistake. 

On Wednesday the NMC consulted two senior orthopedic surgeons—Dr Shishir Lakhey of Nepal Mediciti Hospital and Dr Deepak Prakash Mahara, of Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital. The NMC has asked the doctors to investigate the matter and submit the report soon. 

NMC Chief of Ethical Committee Dr Dhundi Raj Poudel confirmed they consulted with the experts.