NHS must reform how it deals with sexual misconduct to better support victims, say surgeons

The Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS England) is calling for urgent reforms to tackle sexual harassment in the NHS after a High Court judge ruled that a surgeon who harassed junior colleagues over more than a decade should not be struck off the medical register.1

Mr Justice Calver decided that erasure from the register would be a “disproportionate” sanction for James Gilbert, a leading transplant surgeon and supervisor of surgical trainees at the Oxford Transplant Centre who touched women “inappropriately” without their consent, including in the operating theatre, and made sexually suggestive comments.2

A medical practitioners tribunal decided last August to suspend him from the register for eight months without review, allowing him to return to unrestricted practice at the end of the …