An Egyptian-trained surgeon who nearly killed a patient during a botched emergency bowel operation at Royal Oldham Hospital was struck off six years later, exposing systemic delays in the regulatory system, a leading lawyer has warned.
Dr Yasser Adly Abdel Rahman's operation on August 25, 2020, created a “closed loop” that sent the patient's bowel contents back into his stomach. An expert described the error as “as bad as it gets” and “not known to man”. The patient was left in uncontrollable pain and would have died without corrective surgery.
Regulatory failures
Conditions were placed on Dr Rahman's registration in July 2021. More than four years after he breached those restrictions by taking a locum post in Ireland in February 2022 without properly notifying the GMC, he was erased from the medical register. The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service ruled his misconduct was “fundamentally incompatible with continued registration”.
Janine Collier, Partner and Head of Medical Negligence at Tees Law, told Express.co.uk that Dr Rahman's case was “a striking example” of the delays that have become “an accepted feature of investigations, inquiries and the regulatory system”. She said: “In the most serious cases, delays of several years are unfortunately far from unusual. If anything, they have become an accepted feature of investigations, inquiries and the regulatory system. Sadly, we see the same pattern time and again.”
Other cases
Ms Collier's firm is not representing any patients affected by Abdel Rahman. It acts for more than 40 families of children treated by former Addenbrooke's surgeon Kuldeep Stohr and for former patients of Great Ormond Street orthopaedic surgeon Yaser Jabbar.
Great Ormond Street's own review identified seven complaints about Jabbar between 2017 and 2022, yet he continued operating on children until autumn 2022. A review later found 94 children suffered harm attributable to his treatment. The GMC imposed interim conditions on 4 January 2024. He surrendered his UK licence four days later and is understood to be living and practising in the UAE. More than two years on there is still no final fitness-to-practise decision.
Concerns about Stohr date back to 2016 when an external reviewer made recommendations the Trust failed to implement. She continued practising without restriction until 2024. Interim conditions were imposed only in October 2025 — almost nine years after the original concerns. Families are still waiting for any substantive finding.
The most notorious precedent remains Ian Paterson. Colleagues raised concerns about his surgery as early as 2003, but he continued operating on NHS and private patients for years. He was not struck off until 2017 after his criminal conviction, by which time more than 1,000 patients were believed to have undergone unnecessary or inappropriate procedures.
Need for change
Ms Collier said: “The common thread running through all of these cases is that serious concerns were identified years before the regulatory process reached its conclusion. Of course, investigations must be fair and thorough and doctors are entitled to due process, but when investigations routinely take years rather than months, it is patients who are left exposed. Families deserve a system that acts swiftly when serious concerns are raised, not one where accountability comes long after the damage has already been done.”
She added that the same slow processes also harm doctors. Where the GMC suspends a doctor or imposes interim restrictions, that doctor can wait years for a conclusion, and in a significant proportion of cases the investigation ends with no finding against their fitness to practise. Ms Collier said: “During that time, an already overstretched healthcare system is deprived of a skilled professional it can ill afford to lose, and the doctor is left in prolonged limbo. A regulatory system that takes years to reach any conclusion therefore fails patients and doctors alike.”
Ms Collier called for immediate practical changes to prevent restricted doctors obtaining work. Every locum agency and hospital should check a doctor's GMC registration immediately before each placement starts. There should be clear accountability if required checks are not carried out. The GMC should automatically notify any agency or healthcare provider employing a doctor whenever conditions are imposed, changed or lifted. Every locum appointment should require a verified reference from the doctor's most recent employer or responsible officer confirming there are no outstanding concerns.
Ms Collier said: “The fundamental lesson from this case is that patient safety should not depend on a doctor complying with their own restrictions. There should be safeguards built into the system that make it virtually impossible for a doctor who is subject to conditions on their practice to obtain clinical work without those restrictions being identified and enforced before they ever treat a patient.”
On cross-border issues, Ms Collier noted that since Brexit the UK no longer participates in the EU's automatic alert mechanism for healthcare professionals. Although regulators can still exchange information, there is no equivalent real-time system. Closing the loophole is likely to require legislative change through reform of the Medical Act 1983 to introduce mandatory cross-border notification of restrictions.
Ms Collier said: “Patients rightly expect that a doctor's fitness to practise should not depend on which side of a border they happen to be working. Dr Abdel Rahman's case demonstrates why that expectation is not always being met.”
