A surgeon was advised he had severe cataracts in both eyes was recommended to have both removed at once. But he put off the operation for several months and continued with surgeries, including a hernia operation where the patient died, possibly due to the surgeon's poor eyesight. The surgeon admitted to hospital authorities he had cataracts and was suspended from work. When the family of the deceased patient found out about the surgeon's impaired eyesight, they sued him for negligence.

These events took place on Jersey, a small island of almost 100,000 people in the English Channel. Though it is a British territory, it has its own government, the States of Jersey, and its own health system, which operates 1 full-service hospital, the 290-bed General Hospital in the capital, St. Helier.

In December 2008, Narendra Pal, a surgeon from India working at General Hospital, performed a routine hernia operation on a 75-year-old patient, Joseph Vasse, who developed an infection and died a week later. Three months before the patient's death, an ophthalmologist at the hospital advised Dr. Pal he had bilateral cataracts that were "severe," and should get surgery "in very short order," according to Philip Sinel, attorney for the Vasse family. But Dr. Pal decided to delay his cataract operation until the following January.

Mr. Sinel asserts that due to poor eyesight, Dr. Pal botched Mr. Vasse's surgery as well as a routine varicose vein operation the month before, which "went wrong with severe adverse lifelong consequences for the patient," the attorney said in a statement. When hospital administrators first heard Dr. Pal's cataracts shortly after Mr. Vasse's death, they suspended him with pay for 18 months and investigated the matter. Dr. Pal had his cataracts removed and later came back to work at the hospital "shadowing" colleagues. He is now retired.

Leigh Page