Surgeon found guilty of dishonesty is suspended for six months

A former clinical director of surgery who was too “embarrassed” to tell a private hospital that he was banned by his NHS employers from carrying out a range of operations has been suspended from practice for six months by the General Medical Council.

The consultant general surgeon Gideon Lauffer had also operated outside his competence and had failed to tell a patient that he had damaged the man’s left testicle during an inguinal hernia repair procedure, a GMC fitness to practise panel found.

Mr Lauffer, a surgeon with Barking, Havering and Redbridge …