A ‘distinguished’ doctor who told a colleague they looked ‘bent’ because of his colourful scrubs and rainbow lanyard has avoided being struck off but has been suspended.
Dr Satnam Lidder made the comments, then tried to deflect attention away by accusing the doctor of cheating on their medical exams, and by claiming he used the word ‘gay’ to mean ‘happy’. This was rejected by the General Medical Council.
The tribunal heard Dr Lidder was working in the emergency department at King’s College Hospital, in Denmark Hill, in January 2021 when he approached a doctor, who has not been named, about his purple scrubs and said ‘You look bent’. Dr Lidder then pointed to the colleague’s rainbow lanyard and said it also looked ‘bent’, the complainant alleged.
Then when Dr Lidder was reported to the Royal College of Physicians he lied, claiming the doctor had admitted cheating on his exams by looking at the answers in the toilet. The tribunal found the timing of this counter allegation was ‘revealing in respect of Dr Lidder’s motive’.
In evidence, Dr Lidder claimed he said ‘this is shining like a gay rainbow’ in another language, and this could have been misheard as ‘bent’. or been a case of it being lost in translation. He also claimed he used the word ‘gay’ to mean ‘happy’, but conceded this could have been perceived as homophobic.
However, the tribunal said it was ‘highly improbable’ that the complainant had misheard or misunderstood what Dr Lidder had said to him. The panel found the complainant had given ‘clear, consistent, unwavering evidence’ about Dr Lidder’s comments in the days after the conversation when they spoke to colleagues and filed a complaint.
Deciding to suspend him for six months, the tribunal wrote: “Dr Lidder had breached a number of the paragraphs of GMP. It determined that those breaches were serious enough to warrant a suspension, and that no lesser sanction would suffice. It noted that Dr Lidder had sought to discredit a junior colleague, and that his actions could have had serious consequences for Dr A.”
A medical biography describes Dr Satnam Lidder as a “distinguished physician at King’s College Hospital, specialising in the clinical management of patients with multisystem diseases”. It adds: “He leads the hypertension service, focusing on the diagnosis, investigation, and treatment of complex blood pressure disorders.” Dr Lidder now works at another NHS trust in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.
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