Australian surgeon Jayant Patel has been sentenced to 7 years in jail after being found guilty of three counts of manslaughter and one count of grievous bodily harm.

The prosecution described Patel as a “bad surgeon motivated by ego and suffering from lack of insight”. He had been criminally negligent in his work. "Over 19 to 20 months there had been poor decision-making, misdiagnosis, performing surgery on patients who could not withstand it, performing surgery at the wrong hospital and the removal of healthy organs".

The defence maintained that Patel acted only in the best interests of his patients, who had consented to the operations.

The Patel case has been on the front page of Australian newspapers since 2005. The doctor was trained in India and moved to the US. He was censured for negligence and had his licence to practice restricted in both New York and Oregon. However, he managed to talk his way into becoming a surgeon at country town in Queensland where there was a shortage of doctors. There he bullied and bluffed his way through his work until a whistleblower finally convinced authorities to investigate his horrendous record. Patel then fled to the US and had to be extradited to face charges.

Patel will face a separate trial for eight counts of fraud and a second charge of grievous bodily harm. ~ ABC News, Jun 29, Jun 30