Surgeon Dr Peter O’Keefe, who was fired for bullying at a hospital in Wales, has re-joined the NHS in Bristol. In 2015, an independent panel found that Dr O’Keefe had bullied and harassed 26 colleagues which led to his sacking.
WalesOnline has reported that the doctor is now working as a neurologist at Southmead Hospital, which is part of North Bristol Trust. After being dismissed from the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, he worked as an Uber driver, but re-joined the NHS in 2020.
When a complaint was made to the North Bristol NHS trust that Dr O’Keefe was working at another hospital after being dismissed, the trust had responded that “no gross misconduct was proven”. A spokesperson for the trust told WalesOnline that due process had been followed when appointing Dr O’Keefe, who works in the neurosciences division and is on the General Medical Council Register.
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Cardiff and Vale University Health Board stated that an independent appeal had found his behaviour “amounted to gross misconduct” with dismissal being “an appropriate sanction”. Dr O’Keefe was suspended from the University Hospital of Wales in 2012 and was dismissed in August 2015 after the inquiry found he had bullied colleagues.
Dr O’Keefe tried to sue Cardiff and Vale University Health Board for unfair dismissal, claiming he had tried to blow the whistle on unsafe hospital care which had resulted in being fired. The employment tribunal was cancelled after he accepted an undisclosed cash settlement.
When the case was settled in 2015, Dr O’Keefe told the BBC that it was an “enormous relief” not to have the pressure anymore. He added that being the wrong side of 50, he decided to follow a self employment route as an Uber driver, saying at that time that he was “loving it”.
At the time of the settlement, the health board said it was reached to save costs. It later emerged that the health board had spent £238,000 on legal work for the case.
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