SINGAPORE: A doctor has been suspended from medical practice for forging two medical certificates (MCs) to cover her own absences while she was a house officer at Singapore General Hospital (SGH).
Dr Cherida Yong Chun Yin’s suspension will run for three years from Sep 3 this year to Sep 2, 2028, according to a notice posted on the Government Gazette on Tuesday (Sep 9).
While practising at SGH, Dr Yong absented herself from work without a legitimate medical excuse on Jul 1, 2022, and Sep 12, 2022.
To justify her absences, she submitted two fabricated MCs to SGH. The two MCs, purportedly issued by a clinic, were created by Dr Yong without the clinic’s authorisation.
The name and registration number of another doctor were included on the MCs to create the illusion that the clinic had issued them.
Dr Yong’s deception was discovered after administrative checks at SGH revealed discrepancies in the submitted certificates.
Her July MC was found to be false after the support team at the clinic it was supposedly issued from confirmed that Dr Yong had not consulted it on Jul 1, 2022.
The September MC was verified as fraudulent by SingHealth’s administrative processes.
The case was referred to the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) after internal investigations by SGH.
Dr Yong, who claimed she had forged the MCs under personal stress, initially denied doing so but later admitted to the forgeries before her hearing. She asked for a suspension of 20 months.
The SMC, however, argued that Dr Yong should be struck off the medical practitioners register or receive the maximum period of suspension.
The disciplinary tribunal, which rejected characterisations of Dr Yong’s misconduct as impulsive or attributable to emotional stress, suspended her for 36 months. This is the maximum period of suspension.
While no patients were harmed, Dr Yong’s misconduct “strikes at a foundational ethical obligation of the profession”, wrote the tribunal in its grounds of decision.
The wilful forgery of the two MCs, each misusing a doctor’s name and registration number, constitutes “a repeated act of deception that compromises her professional reputation, erodes institutional trust and undermines the credibility of medical certification processes”, it added.
Dr Yong’s suspension began 40 days after the order was issued. She was also ordered to pay the costs of the hearing, including those of the SMC solicitors.
