Doc who hurt police officer suspended

A doctor has been suspended for a year for injuring a police officer and selling substances classified as poisons without a licence.

This was the outcome of two disciplinary tribunal inquiries in June against Dr Khoo Buk Kwong, the Singapore Medical Council said in a statement yesterday.

Dr Khoo, 53, a relief general practitioner who had been practising at Healthplus Clinic in Choa Chu Kang, had earlier been convicted in the Subordinate Courts of causing hurt to a police officer on duty and sentenced to two weeks' jail.

In 2010, he shouted vulgarities at a female police sergeant who responded to a complaint after he did not pay his bill for a K-Box session at Orchard Cineleisure. He also pushed her and kicked her in the abdomen.

Two years earlier, he had sold 650 canisters of cough mixture through a separate company and was convicted of selling two poisons, codeine and promethazine - which are ingredients in some cough syrups - without a licence. He was fined $60,000 for this in 2011. Disciplinary proceedings were initiated against him as his convictions implied "a defect in character which made him unfit for the medical profession", the medical council said.

In his mitigation, Dr Khoo told the first tribunal he had been under "tremendous" stress due to family and personal circumstances, having been declared bankrupt due to failed investments since 2010.

He was suspended for three months from July 12 this year for the first offence and nine months for the second offence.

He was also censured and ordered to pay the cost of the disciplinary tribunal inquiries.

The suspensions, which run consecutively, will end on July 11 next year.

This article was first published on August 6, 2014.
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