Speaker 1: Hi, It's Claire Harvey from The Australian. I'm jumping into
Speaker 1: the feed to let you know there's a new Headley
Speaker 1: Thomas show live right now on Apple Podcasts and The Australian.
Speaker 1: It's called Sick to Death and it's the true story
Speaker 1: of Australia's own so called doc to Death. Headley and
Speaker 1: I chatted about it on our daily news podcast, The Front.
Speaker 1: We're going to play that conversation for you and to
Speaker 1: listen to Sick to Death, go to Sick to Death
Speaker 1: podcast dot com or search Sick to Death in Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Are subscribers here episodes first. You can sign up today
Speaker 1: or link your existing The Australian subscription within Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: to start listening right now. Here's my conversation with Headley,
Speaker 1: Australia's favorite podcaster. The Australian's own national chief correspondent, Headley
Speaker 1: Thomas is back on the air today with Sick to Death,
Speaker 1: an exploration of one of the most remarkable stories of
Speaker 1: the sense how a surgeon was implicated in the death
Speaker 1: and serious injury of scores of patients and earned himself
Speaker 1: the nickname DoD to Death. Today, the Australians bringing Headley's
Speaker 1: book by the same name to life with a gripping
Speaker 1: piece of audio storytelling.
Speaker 2: My name is Headley Thomas.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and five, my reporting exposed shocking medical
Speaker 3: negligence at the heart of a major healthcare system. An
Speaker 3: overseas trained surgeon who was nicknamed docor Death by the nurses,
Speaker 3: doctors and hospital administrators left patients mutilated, incapacitated, even dead.
Speaker 3: Sick to Death is based on my book of the
Speaker 3: same name, and it's the true story of doctor Jan
Speaker 3: Patel's lies and manipulation and the herculean effort it took
Speaker 3: to finally stop him.
Speaker 1: Indian born American surgeon jay and Patel was director of
Speaker 1: surgery at the Bunderberg Base Hospital between two thousand and
Speaker 1: three and two thousand and five. The reporting of Headley Thomas,
Speaker 1: plus the courage of whistleblowing nurse Tony Hoffman and crusading
Speaker 1: local MP rob Messenger, brought Patel's misconduct to light. A
Speaker 1: Commission of inquiry in November two thousand and five found
Speaker 1: thirteen patients died because of his negligence and many more
Speaker 1: suffered complications.
Speaker 4: The United States Marshals collected the doctor from a Portland
Speaker 4: prison on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Morning, they took him to Los Angeles. Pattel was extradited
Speaker 1: from the US to Australia to face trial, and was
Speaker 1: convicted and jailed in Queensland in twenty ten on three
Speaker 1: counts of manslaughter and one of grievous bodily harm that
Speaker 1: related to surgeries on four patients. The convictions were quashed
Speaker 1: on appeal in twenty twelve after the High Court ruled
Speaker 1: he'd suffered a miscarriage of justice, triggering his release from prison.
Speaker 4: The sixty two year old was released from jail last
Speaker 4: Friday after the High Court found a gross miscarriage of
Speaker 4: justice occurred during his trial in twenty ten.
Speaker 5: In the trial, allegations were made not only about my
Speaker 5: competence as a doctor, were also going to the root
Speaker 5: of my character and my descency as a human being.
Speaker 1: After two failed retrials, one of which resulted in a
Speaker 1: manslaughter acquittal, Queensland prosecutors dropped all criminal medical negligence charges
Speaker 1: against Pateel in twenty thirteen, and he pleaded guilty to
Speaker 1: four counts of fraud. He admitted lying to Queensland authorities
Speaker 1: by hiding his American disciplinary history to get the Bunderberg
Speaker 1: job and was given a two year suspended prison sentence.
Speaker 1: He flew out of Australia the following day.
Speaker 5: AM long and very difficult journey. I'm pleased that you saw,
Speaker 5: and I'll be going back to my life and my word.
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, a Queensland tribunal ordered Patel never be
Speaker 1: registered in a medical profession in Australia again. And now
Speaker 1: we've found him in Portland, Oregon, where Patel now lives.
Speaker 2: My name is Ellie Dudley.
Speaker 1: I'm a Patel was out for a walk when he
Speaker 1: was approached by our reporter Ellie Dudley and our videographer
Speaker 1: Quint Brewer. I'd really love to sit down and interview
Speaker 1: you and chat about the events in Bunderberg in the
Speaker 1: early two.
Speaker 5: Thousand Agoah completely forgot about it and I'm beyond that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would really love to.
Speaker 2: Sit down with you as has done this history.
Speaker 4: And hear about your what you've got to say about
Speaker 4: what happened. You've got nothing to say.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, I don't react to stupid criticism, So
Speaker 5: I'm on my life.
Speaker 2: I'm fine.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Do you think you were treated poorly or.
Speaker 5: Don don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: Helly, what was your response to hearing that from Jan
Speaker 1: pattel Well.
Speaker 3: I think he was trying to put a brave face
Speaker 3: on what must have been one of the most incredibly
Speaker 3: painful chapters in his life. A man with an oversized ego,
Speaker 3: very bombastic and confident and manipulative and dishonest surgeon who
Speaker 3: came to Australia having lied about his background in the
Speaker 3: United States, having lied about the negligence and the investigations
Speaker 3: that led to him being very severely disciplined and barred
Speaker 3: from practicing the surgery that he then decided that he
Speaker 3: would practice in Australia in a public hospital when he
Speaker 3: was welcomed with open arms, And when he said that,
Speaker 3: when he said he'd forgotten, well do we ever forget
Speaker 3: something like that? Imagine his life was upended, the lives
Speaker 3: of many other people had been ended by his surgery,
Speaker 3: and he went to jail, he served time behind bars.
Speaker 3: So I don't think he was being truthful when he
Speaker 3: said he had forgotten about it.
Speaker 1: This story was absolutely enormous. It went around the world,
Speaker 1: and of course it captivated Australians and I think it
Speaker 1: shook some of our faith in the health system that
Speaker 1: we do like to trust.
Speaker 2: But your work at.
Speaker 1: The Brisbane Career Mail at the time started, like a
Speaker 1: lot of stories do, with something very simple at Google search.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the genesis of the story and what
Speaker 1: did you google?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, back then, Claire, it was April two thousand
Speaker 3: and five and smartphones were something you know, I don't
Speaker 3: think we actually knew of if we used mobile phones, sure,
Speaker 3: but they didn't have the capacity for Internet and downloads a.
Speaker 2: Big data file. So I had been.
Speaker 3: In Bunderberg, this regional city short flight from Brisbane. I'd
Speaker 3: gone up there to investigate the concerns of a nurse
Speaker 3: who had been in touch with me, Tony Hoffman. This
Speaker 3: nurse had told me about a surgeon that she said
Speaker 3: was dangerous, was killing patients.
Speaker 1: Heddley met other nurses, including Karen Jenner, who told him,
Speaker 1: of course, doctor Bateell didn't become a bad surgeon overnight.
Speaker 3: I asked her what do you mean by that, and
Speaker 3: she said, well, you know, he's in his fifties, he's
Speaker 3: been practicing surgery for a long time.
Speaker 2: He didn't become this bad overnight.
Speaker 3: And I said, in front of Tony and Karen and
Speaker 3: the other nurses who had taken a big risk after
Speaker 3: their shifts to come and talk to me, said, so,
Speaker 3: do you mean that where he's practiced previously, there's probably
Speaker 3: going to be similar issues. There'll be a trail of problems,
Speaker 3: badly damaged patients where he's previously worked. And they all said, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: that's right, that's what they'll be. And I couldn't sleep
Speaker 3: that night in this little budget motel in Bunderberg because
Speaker 3: I kept thinking about that comment and what it possibly meant.
Speaker 3: And the next day I flew back to Brisbane and
Speaker 3: as I said, we didn't have smartphones, so I had
Speaker 3: to go.
Speaker 2: Back to my desk in the newspaper building. I wanted
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 3: Straight home, it had been a difficult assignment, but instead
Speaker 3: I went to my desk to perform that online check.
Speaker 2: It was a Google search. I literally googled Dr J.
Speaker 3: Patel and disciplinary history or words to that effect, and
Speaker 3: a PDF with the details of Dr Patel's disciplinary record
Speaker 3: and the findings against him in Portland, in the United
Speaker 3: States and in New York State suddenly appeared and I realized,
Speaker 3: holy crap. And that day, well, that night, we scrambled
Speaker 3: to remake the front page and write a feature article
Speaker 3: about it with the headline why.
Speaker 2: Didn't they check?
Speaker 1: You went on to win the Gold Walkley twice, Australia's
Speaker 1: highest honor for journalism. You're one of the world's most
Speaker 1: respected investigative journals. Did that experience of googling something that
Speaker 1: I think as a journalist you might have thought, of
Speaker 1: course they would have checked that. Of course people would
Speaker 1: have checked. That teach you something about asking those basic
Speaker 1: questions that you might assume have already been answered.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean if I as a journalist. Two years
Speaker 3: after Patel's employment at Bunderberg Hospital, two years in which
Speaker 3: he's been the subject of internal complaints, there were even
Speaker 3: issues raised in the State parliament. First person to discover
Speaker 3: that he's got this terrible record in the United States,
Speaker 3: which meant that he shouldn't have been employed to prepare
Speaker 3: a cut finger, let alone to sophagectamies and other very
Speaker 3: serious operations. It just underlines why journalism can make such
Speaker 3: a powerful difference. We need to come along and keep
Speaker 3: doing those and asking questions.
Speaker 1: Coming up. The whistleblower who worried Headley would think she
Speaker 1: was crazy, she.
Speaker 4: Became known as the whistleblower. But for the people of
Speaker 4: Bundenberg and Queensland, Tony Hoffman risked everything to save their lives.
Speaker 4: A nurse in the local hospital, Tony stood alone against
Speaker 4: doctor Bottel, a senior surgeon who she believed responsible for
Speaker 4: the deaths of pace. She fought hard to be heard.
Speaker 1: Something that's a characteristic of your journalism is forming relationships
Speaker 1: of deep trust and friendships really with whistleblowers and sources.
Speaker 1: In this case, it's Tony Hoffman, the nurse who you
Speaker 1: spoke about, who's carried a very heavy burden from being
Speaker 1: the person who blew the whistle on Jan Betel. You've
Speaker 1: done a lovely interview with Tony as part of this
Speaker 1: series where she talks about your first face to face
Speaker 1: meeting where she was very emotional. You know, she was
Speaker 1: very worried, she was very afraid, but she was trying
Speaker 1: to get you to trust her and to believe it
Speaker 1: even though she was very upset, she was telling the truth.
Speaker 6: I mean, I was frightened. I was living on adenaline.
Speaker 6: I was talking really fast. I was so scared. I
Speaker 6: was crying all the time. So I was emotionally distraught.
Speaker 6: So I was presenting myself like that, So it's hard
Speaker 6: for people to understand that you can still be credible
Speaker 6: but be emotional.
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting dynamic, isn't it the journal who
Speaker 1: needs to be able to trust your sources. But often
Speaker 1: people who blow the whistle are, because of the trauma
Speaker 1: of doing that, very emotional. They seem that they might
Speaker 1: not be credible. Did you know from the start that
Speaker 1: you could trust Tony?
Speaker 3: I had a gut feeling that I could trust Tony,
Speaker 3: but we were wary of each other. And often that's
Speaker 3: the start of a relationship with your source or whistle
Speaker 3: blowing contact. You're really trying to work out what the
Speaker 3: potential weaknesses are and whether the person looks like they've
Speaker 3: lost their marbles because of the fact they've been trying
Speaker 3: to blow the whistle about something of great importance and
Speaker 3: public interest for a long time and no one's listening,
Speaker 3: or whether they've lost their marbles and they're just making
Speaker 3: stuff up. With Tony Hoffman, I believed her because I
Speaker 3: had myself done quite a lot of reporting before meeting
Speaker 3: Tony about Queensland Health, and I was aware of the
Speaker 3: incredibly deceptive and downright dishonest conduct of senior people in
Speaker 3: Queensland Health in covering up big problems. I'd also done
Speaker 3: a lot of reporting on the challenges facing patients and
Speaker 3: health administrators when it came to overseas trained doctors. Australia
Speaker 3: had and still has a great shortage of doctors, so
Speaker 3: we were importing doctors from overseas. We needed them, particularly
Speaker 3: in areas of need, rural and regional areas, and Queensland
Speaker 3: needed them more than anywhere at that time, but we
Speaker 3: were not properly vetting the doctors. And I had done
Speaker 3: a series of stories back in that period, shortly before
Speaker 3: I broke the Betel story, and that series focused on
Speaker 3: how overseas trained doctors without proper credentials, who hadn't been
Speaker 3: checked out thoroughly and had been given jobs of responsibility,
Speaker 3: had caused a lot of harm and it was being
Speaker 3: swept under the rug. And I remember when I started
Speaker 3: writing those stories and asking questions to develop those stories,
Speaker 3: getting some raised eyebrows from people and having to sort
Speaker 3: of answer their questions about whether this was some kind
Speaker 3: of racist line and reporting where we were attacking the
Speaker 3: overseas trained doctors, many of whom were from countries like India,
Speaker 3: and Pakistan and so on, because they weren't white and
Speaker 3: nothing could be further from the truth. It was about
Speaker 3: upholding standards of care and ensuring that the Australian public
Speaker 3: was protected. But what we discovered as a result of
Speaker 3: the inquiries that were held after the Hell scandal really
Speaker 3: blew up was that in Queensland we were not just
Speaker 3: getting doctors from overseas who were incompetent. We were employing
Speaker 3: people who pretended to be doctors, one of whom was
Speaker 3: a Russian fellow who had no experience in psychiatry and
Speaker 3: had been employed as a psychiatric registrar and had done
Speaker 3: a lot of damage to the patients by telling them
Speaker 3: all they didn't need their medication. And he got away
Speaker 3: with this for a long time, and a number of
Speaker 3: psychiatrists who assessed him said, oh, we.
Speaker 2: Thought it was pretty good. It'd never been to medical school.
Speaker 1: We've worked together at The Australian for years now and
Speaker 1: we've made quite a few of your big investigations. We
Speaker 1: always seem to do it the hard way. I think
Speaker 1: that's you, that's your fault. And in this one, we've
Speaker 1: brought this story to life with nearly two hundred voice actors,
Speaker 1: a beautiful production led by our audio lead Jasper Leak
Speaker 1: and supported by producers Kristin Amyot, Stephanie Coombs and leott Semaglue.
Speaker 1: It sounds absolutely beautiful. You and I have talked a
Speaker 1: lot over the years about why audio is a great
Speaker 1: way to tell big stories like these, long stories like this.
Speaker 1: What do you think it is about sick to death
Speaker 1: that lends itself to a listen rather than a read.
Speaker 3: It's a chilling story, and there's intimacy and partnership, you know,
Speaker 3: for a journalist who back in two thousand and five,
Speaker 3: I was thirty eight, I was probably you know, well
Speaker 3: cynical by then, but I wasn't prepared for what was
Speaker 3: uncovered in that saga.
Speaker 2: We were able to lift.
Speaker 3: The lid on that as a result of this crisis
Speaker 3: surrounding a doctor Patel in a regional hospital, which just
Speaker 3: then widened into a massive and I think veryortan't investigation
Speaker 3: of the entire health system, and it showed what can
Speaker 3: be made possible when you start with something small and
Speaker 3: the damage and the ripples go out. And these lessons
Speaker 3: are still around today, Claire. Some things have changed for
Speaker 3: the better. Some things haven't and we need to be
Speaker 3: constantly reminded of this. I am in no doubt that
Speaker 3: across Australia today there will be doctors, surgeons and people
Speaker 3: pretending to be doctors who shouldn't be there, who are
Speaker 3: incompetent or fraudulent, who are just impostors, and we have
Speaker 3: to be always vigilant about that.
Speaker 1: Ketley Thomas is the Australian's National Chief correspondent and his
Speaker 1: investigation Sick to Death is available now at Sick todethpodcast
Speaker 1: dot com, in Apple podcasts and in the Australians Mobile
Speaker 1: app