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Admiral Piett
Guest
Apr 19, 2011
GP guilty of record number of offences
A GENERAL practitioner has been suspended and fined by the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) for a record 30 counts of professional misconduct.
Dr Chu Siu Kong, 45, was found guilty of inappropriately prescribing hypnotics and codeine-containing medication to his patients, and was suspended for five months from April 9 and fined $5,000, the SMC said yesterday.
A spokesman for the regulatory body for doctors said this case presented the highest number of offences of which a doctor has been found guilty in relation to hypnotics prescription, and that the severity of such improper conduct called for a sentence that would send a warning to other doctors, 'especially those who may consider committing such transgressions purely for financial gain'.
Dr Chu, who practised at Green Cross Medical Centre in Tampines, had initially faced 42 charges following a complaint filed against him by the Ministry of Health (MOH) in September 2007.
This is his first conviction.
The SMC spokesman noted that Dr Chu had shown 'a clear indifference to the accepted standard of practice'; in particular, he had failed to follow MOH's prescribing guidelines on the class of hypnotic drugs called benzodiazepines.
Read the full story in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times.
