Westmead Hospital: Dr Alan Sexton found guilty of medical bungles
A senior anaesthetist and former Liberal Party member has been prosecuted for inflicting pain on patients during a series of medical blunders.
Parramatta
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Former Westmead Hospital anaesthetist and aspiring politician Alan Sexton has been prosecuted for inflicting pain on patients during a series of medical blunders.
The Health Care Complaints Commission prosecuted the North Parramatta man after the Medical Professional Standards Committee filed a complaint against his care of three patients in 2014 and 2015 when he was a senior anaesthetist.
The Professional Standards Committee found in June 2014, Dr Sexton failed to label four syringes with the drugs for a 75-year-old woman’s bowel surgery, and he also failed to obtain her consent for the anaesthetic and pain management, a claim he denied.
The stuff-up meant the woman, who also had a history of coronary disease, suffered low blood pressure during the surgery.
For up to 25 minutes during the surgery, “Patient A’s” blood pressure plunged more than 30 per cent below normal, placing her at risk of acute heart attack and a cardiovascular accident.
The hearing discussed how the woman also “exhibited varying degrees of hypertension’’ from the drug Fentanyl’’ and her temperature dropped as low as 34.7 degrees during the surgery.
Thesecond complaint,in January 2015, involved a man suffering a cardiac arrest as he was being administered anesthesia for the planned surgery.
“Patient B’’ was already at risk of dying during the spinal surgery, which was called off after he suffered a cardiac arrest.
The day before he was to undergo surgery, he was discharged from Westmead Hospital’s intensive care unit with conditions including sepsis, multi-organ failure, and heart and renal failure.
When the patient required immediate CPR during the anesthesia, Dr Sexton “was standing at the monitor not doing anything,’’ a nurse told the hearing.
The operation was cancelled and the man was taken to back to ICU where he died.
The Professional Standards Committee found Dr Sexton failed to promptly acknowledge the cardiac arrest or tell fellow medical staff about the incident.
But Dr Sexton continued to operate on a young woman later that day — a move doctors that were part of the Professional Standards Committee labelled “an appalling management decision”.
“It is possible that the events concerning Patient B played a role in his decision making with Patient C,’’ the doctor said in the hearing.
Patient C was scheduled for surgery after a motorbike accident in which she suffered hip and leg injuries and blood loss.
Dr Sexton placed the woman in a sitting position that put her at risk of displacing her pelvis and choosing an inappropriate anaesthetic, which put her at risk of falling blood pressure.
The Professional Standards Committee also found he chose a type of anaesthetic which was not suitable for the type and length of the planned surgery that placed her at risk.
The Dr Sexton admitted some aspects of the complaints but denied that he was guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct regarding the first and second patients.
It found aspects of Dr Sexton’s care with the three patients amounted to unsatisfactory professional conduct.
Dr Sexton stopped working as an anaesthetist in January 2015 and did not renew his practising registration in October 2019.
The Professional Standards Committee made its decision in November and it has just recently made public.
The conditions will apply if he seeks registration to practice again but the hearing found he no longer wanted to be an anaesthetist because of the “cloud over his head”.
“He would like to teach, as he loves the intellectual aspect of this, but he
has had no offers to do this after 2016,’’ the judgement said.
“He would take up an offer to teach, he said, if he received such an offer and, in these circumstances, he would comply with any restrictions imposed on him. He does obey the rules, he added.”
Dr Sexton has worked at Westmead Hospital since 1983 and is an aspiring politician.
He stood as an Independent candidate for Parramatta in the 2017 local government election and tried unsuccessfully to become Seven Hills state MP in last year’s poll.
The Donald Trump fan resigned from the Liberal Party in 2015 after he posted a Facebook post that attacked Arabs as having inbred brains.