Brain surgeon sacked for letting teenage daughter drill through patient's skull is suing hospital in Austria for dismissing her
A brain surgeon who was sacked for letting her 13-year-old daughter drill a hole in a patient's skull during an operation is suing hospital bosses to get her job back.
The medic, not named by local media in Graz, Austria, was dismissed in July after horrified health chiefs heard the truth about the op.
The 39-year-old patient had been rushed to the city's LKH hospital for urgent surgery last January after his skull was crushed by a tree during a forestry accident.
When her daughter's role in the op began to emerge in April, hospital bosses dismissed the neurosurgeon and called in the police who broke the news to the horrified patient. Now the medic is suing the hospital for unfair dismissal, claiming they dismissed her without following proper employment law procedure.
At an initial hearing this week her legal team said they should have dismissed her as soon as they had received her statement confessing to allowing her daughter to operate. Instead, they suspended her and then waited three months until after they had received a statement from the anaesthetist on the operation.
The court was told there was no chance of a settlement being reached because the surgeon would accept nothing short of full reinstatement.
Judges remanded the case until 20th January when the surgeon and other medics who were in the operating theatre are due to give evidence.
Story: NewsX