MOSCOW, July 3 (RIA Novosti) – A Russian physician is under investigation for apparently beating a patient who had just undergone cardiac surgery, investigators said Wednesday. The patient reportedly died soon after the incident.
A surveillance video uploaded onto YouTube on Tuesday evidently shows the physician punching the patient in the head and then pounding on his chest, directly above his heart. The footage displays the date February 21, 2013.
The incident reportedly happened at the Federal Center for Cardiovascular Surgery in Perm, a city of about a million people in Russia’s Ural Mountains.
Russian online tabloid Life News on Wednesday cited the physician as saying the patient insulted him at the end of a 36-hour shift and he lost his temper. In the video, the patient appears strapped to his bed.
“As soon as fellow medical personnel and I approached the patient, he began to insult me with some detestable words. That’s when I, so to say, went berserk. We had worked for a long time on this difficult patient … and no thanks whatsoever!” Life News quoted physician Andrei Votyakov as saying.
