Hostile, degrading, offensive: women demand harsher penalties for 'God complex' surgeons

Anger as consultant who touched female colleague under the operating table returns to work after being suspended for just a year

- Rachel Sylvester Political Editor

For 13 years the transplant surgeon James Gilbert sexually harassed many women colleagues in and around the operating theatre.

The renowned specialist took advantage of his position as an educational supervisor to grope junior medics and bombard female trainees with sexual innuendo - including during surgery at the prestigious Oxford Transplant Centre.

"It was a constant game of cat and mouse," says one of his victims, Ms G, now a consultant surgeon, who testified against him at a medical tribunal. "It was a systematic takedown and manipulation of vulnerable trainees. And it was in the context of operating - you were working to look after patients and this was what he was distracting us with."

Last year, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) ruled that Gilbert's fitness to practise as a doctor was "impaired" after finding that he had touched women "inappropriately" without their consent and created "an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating and offensive environment" for female surgeons.

The panel determined that his actions between 2009 and 2022 were "sexually motivated" and "an abuse" of his senior position. Yet the surgeon, who once described himself as the "golden boy" of the transplant unit, was only suspended for a year. Last week he was eligible to start operating on patients again.

A fitness to practise hearing found that Gilbert, pictured right, was "remorseful" and had "taken positive action to ensure that his misconduct is not repeated". He apologised to his victims and promised to be "an ambassador for change against inappropriate workplace behaviour", particularly towards female colleagues.