A doctor has brought the Bermuda Hospitals Board to court on charges of wrongful dismissal, claiming BHB authorities defamed him by saying patients’ safety was at risk.

Charles Curtis-Thomas was fired after just three weeks on the job as a hospitalist in 2012 — but has accused director of the hospitalist service Arlene Basden of maligning him to others.

BHB CEO Venetta Symonds and human resources officer Marcia Pringle both defended the hospital’s decision, maintaining from the stand that Dr Curtis-Thomas was dismissed over legitimate concerns. Ms Pringle also said that under the terms of his three-month probation, Dr Curtis-Thompson’s employers were entitled to fire him for own reasons.

Questioned by the complainant, who represented himself in court, Dr Basden told Dr Curtis-Thomas that supervisors couldn’t afford to wait past 21 days to sack him.

“You were too deficient — we could not wait three months,” she told him, adding that his supervisor, Vincent Riley, found his clinical knowledge to be “very deficient”.

But Dr Curtis-Thomas countered that Dr Riley himself had observed that the evaluation form used “does not address the job of medical officer”.

“That should not be taken as complete gospel,” he added, pointing out that his supervisor had also noted that he’d seen “some improvement” and found him “likely to succeed with coaching”.

“That comes back to orientation — just a couple hours’ orientation could have made a difference,” he told her.

Dr Basden admitted she’d worked late and ended up forgetting to meet with the new doctor on June 25, 2012 — his first day of work.

However, she responded: “Orientation is a process. It doesn’t happen in only one day. My time with you would only have been one hour.”

Dr Curtis-Thomas told Dr Basden she’d ordered him to report to her office in a “militant, authoritative voice”, prompting Mr Justice Hellman to intervene again.

The complainant took her through pages of patient records that had been signed off on by supervising physicians during his short tenure, telling her there was no evidence that his clinical skills had been deficient. And he called it “strange” that she had been able to make a quick assessment of his skills during a short interview.

Dr Basden responded: “It was very clear during the initial interview, when I asked the doctor how he evaluated a chest pain — I felt that his answer was very, very deficient.”

Dr Curtis-Thomas called that “subjective”, to which she responded: “I was asking you an objective question.”

Dr Basden told the court that she’d initially taken case to welcome the new doctor, as the spouse of a Bermudian who was keen to work on the Island. However, she told lawyer Stephanie Hanson she’d become concerned after she told him to send an e-mail about a patient who was being discharged, and found the entire contents of the message were written in the subject line. Dr Basden said she’d directed the new hospitalist to the IT department for training, but he “dismissed it and said that he didn’t need it”.

She later found nurses “disgruntled” because Dr Curtis-Thomas hadn’t followed labelling procedure for a blood transfusion. “When the nurses instructed him to label it, he said he didn’t have to and he quarrelled with them.”

When she questioned why he’d done the procedure during the night hours when it could have been done the next day, she said: “I don’t believe Dr Curtis-Thomas was happy with me telling him that.”

She added that King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, as a community facility, and was not intended to provide doctors with training.

The physician challenged her on her assertion that he hadn’t known enough about one of his patients, a stroke victim, saying it wasn’t his responsibility to know details like what job the patient had.

“No,” Dr Basden replied. “It’s all our responsibility to know our patients. That’s fundamental medicine.”

The case continues today.