Surgeon suspended for “pushy Americans” comment

A consultant orthopaedic surgeon who told a severely ill teenager to “pull himself together” has been suspended from practising for six months by the General Medical Council.

The council's fitness to practise panel heard that Fergus Paterson, aged 57, dismissed the boy's worried parents as “pushy Americans” when they suggested that he had developed sepsis after an operation to reset a fractured elbow.

The boy, known only as patient A, broke his arm in summer camp in the United States in 2003, and was treated for his injury there. Soon after, the family returned to the United Kingdom, where …