How Nigerian Doctor 'Bullied' in Canada, Moves to sue hospital Over Forgery

Akinbiyi told The Press that the hospital had forged charts to defend itself in a suit he filed over bullying.

"Apart from the suit I had initially filed against the hospital for bullying in 2023, I am planning on filing a separate one against them for forgery in the coming days," said Akinbiyi.

"After I took both the hospital and the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) to court, I was harassed and intimidated on several occasions by members working for both entities.

"Rather than apologise for their past actions and see to it that I get compensated for the trauma I was made to go through, they came up with trumped-up allegations that included several claims that I had mismanaged several patients' cases in my 40 years of working at the hospital."

When Regina General Hospital and the SHA came up with the counter allegations, Akinbiyi got his lawyer to request that the charts reflecting the patients' cases he had allegedly mismanaged be produced.

Both the hospital and the SHA would, however, not provide him with his request.

A chart is a hospital document that reflects a patient's active and past medical history.

"In the end, it took them a year before they finally produced copies of the charts," said Akinbiyi.

When Akinbiyi reviewed the charts he had received, he discovered some of them had either been doctored or forged. This then made him contact two separate forensic experts in Toronto for help.

"When the forensic experts were done, they confirmed that some of the documents had indeed been edited and some contents forged," said Akinbiyi.

"Apart from my plans to sue the SHA and the hospital for forgery, I will also be getting the court to compel them to produce the original charts that were doctored.

"I am not about to allow this slide. I have been in this profession for 40 years. I have taught and groomed many students who are themselves now professors in the medical field."

ANALYSIS MADE BY ONE OF THE FORENSIC EXPERTS
Comments Made by Forensic Expert
A copy of one of the charts made available to The Press reflected the analysis made by one of the forensic experts Akinbiyi had consulted.

Some of the comments made on the chart by the expert were that "a particular date and month had been cut off" and that signatures belonging to Akinbiyi and one Dr. Mawson, a resident doctor who co-treated the patient, had also been wiped off.

The expert also noted that he reached out via telephone call, text message and email to Mawson to get a reaction to all the allegations levelled against Akinbiyi in the chart but did not get a response to any of them.

More importantly, the expert also noted that it took the SHA and the hospital one year to finally make the chart available.

GENESIS

In December 2023, FIJ reported how Akinbiyi was forced to resuscitate his own daughter, who had suffered a cardiac arrest twice, by the hospital's management.

The incident happened in September 2017. After he managed to revive his daughter, he verbally registered his displeasure with the hospital, stating that he should not have been forced to treat his own daughter when any other doctor could have been assigned to her.

Rather than get a formal apology from the hospital, however, he was subjected to several acts of harassment and intimidation that included several claims that he had mismanaged several patients' cases in his 40 years of working at the hospital.

He was later suspended from practicing at the hospital, and this led to him suing the hospital. The main defendants in the case are the Regina General Hospital and the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA), the health authority that provides direct and contracted health services in the region.