Otto Chan

Who is Otto Chan?

Dr Otto Chan is a consultant radiologist, married and a father of 7 children. He is known as the whistleblower on several issues that related to patient safety, training issues in radiology. He also blew the whistle on terms of employment for flexible trainees. He is also the editor of a book, ABC of Emergency Radiology and co-editor of Ultrasound in Emergency Care.

He was sacked for alleged gross misconduct on the 7th June 2006 by The Barts and The London NHS Trust who run the Royal London Hospital.

One of the main issues that led to him blowing the whistle was the thousands of X-ray films and scans that were left lying around, lined up in a London hospital's dirty corridor and stayed that way unchecked for years. They belonged to more than 100,000 patients. As a result of this being brought to attention the senior doctor who revealed the scandal, namely Dr Otto Chan had been sacked.

Some of the 15,000 packets of films and scans were kept in the corridors because the hospital lacked the money and means to analyse them all. It is estimated that only half of the films and scans were ever seen by a specialist. This meant that thousands of patients and their doctors will never know whether or not their images showed any signs of disease.