Psychiatrist in Moscow was fired for talking with a patient about conception according to the "Becker method"

The psychiatrist himself is convinced that the real reason for his elimination is not in lexical sophistication, but in “wrong” questions to the authorities about his salary.

Julia Suntsova

The last three years, when the budgetary health care in Russia has already been thoroughly captured by the so-called. optimization and optimizers, the doctor Sergey Korotetskiy had the audacity to ask the management too often - but where, in fact, have disappeared due to his payments?

Since 2015, according to the doctor, he was not paid extra for unpaid leave, which lasts 63 days, and not 28 days for which he was released, incentive payments were reduced, the percentage of paid appointments was reduced to a minimum - 5-8% instead of 30% of checks as it was before. At the same time, stubs on paid services have disappeared from the reporting.

For unknown reasons, payments did not reach the employee for years. At the request of the doctor himself, independent accountants calculated his possible losses - the amount was rather big: more than a million rubles.

The unpleasant questions that Korotetsky periodically asked his superiors gave rise to a protracted monetary conflict between the parties. Since then, a psychiatrist who has worked in medicine for 42 years (31 of them in psychiatry), who was in charge of hospitals during this time, had authority with patients, and began to "behave wrongly" and "allow himself too much with patients." The denouement was unexpected.

For three years, the psychiatrist of the paid services department has accumulated two disciplinary sanctions - one also for an alleged complaint from a patient (though no one really saw a statement from her), and the second for referring the patient to a medical commission for a consultation, and not a personal diagnosis.

The reason for the third penalty, which is followed by dismissal according to the Labor Law, was a misconduct, expressed, in the employer's opinion, in violation of ethics and deontology.

What was Korotetsky's psychiatrist accused of?

The episode charged to the doctor dates back to September last year.

Patient N turned to Psychiatric Clinical Hospital No. 4 for a mental health certificate for further employment in the public service ( editor's note. The patient's personal data were not disclosed due to the legislation on medical secrecy). The patient was satisfied with the conclusion itself, but not with the quality of the reception. Leaving the office, she went straight to the management - to write a complaint against the "vulgar" doctor.

“I was interested in my personal life, why I hadn’t given birth yet, I told how to get pregnant using oral sex, with the smallest details”, “during the whole reception I behaved very familiarly, made compliments, commented on how civil servants got him, who breed worse than cockroaches "- this is how the woman described her impressions of Korotetsky's reception.

The patient asked for a check on the doctor and in the future "to protect patients from his actions".

Psychiatrist Sergei Korotetsky announced his version of what happened to patient N on September 23, 2020 in an interview with Novy Izvestia.

- On September 23, a woman came to me for a certificate to get a job in the civil service. She had no complaints, but when collecting anamnesis she answered that “she lived with a goat for seven years,” who did not want children. The husband, as I understood from her story, all the years of cohabitation had been using contraceptives himself and forced her to take contraceptive drugs; his wife's desire to have a child was ignored.

Summing up her story, she concluded: “The years were wasted, I gave water, fed, and he turned out to be such a bastard”, - says Sergey Korotetskiy.

In the case of revealing family and (or) sexual disharmony, which was directly evidenced by the statements of the patient, the doctor should dwell in detail on collecting anamnesis about the family and sexual life of the subject - this is an obligatory moment for determining the mental status of a person, the doctor explains.

"Then the woman asked - how is it possible in such a situation to have children (get pregnant)? I said that today science knows only two ways - natural and artificial. Speaking about artificial, I listed: in vitro fertilization, spermbank. Concretizing, I mentioned the well-known story of the conception of a child by a method called the Boris Becker method. The child of the famous tennis player was conceived by in vitro fertilization using oral manipulations. The term is widely used both in specialized medical literature and in fiction. During the reception, the woman also complained about the low salaries of civil servants, to which I responded: “Well, yes, it's not enough. But there are many of them themselves, they are breeding like cockroaches". At the same time, the expression "breed like cockroaches" was uttered by me without any negative color, and indicated only the rate of increase in civil servants", - says Korotetsky.

According to him, the patient thanked and bowed when she left, smiled - she had not heard about the Becker method before, this information seemed to her a godsend. The woman asked for a phone number for further consultation. But on that day, the doctor saw her for the first and last time, on this note all their relationships ended.

Immediately afterwards, as if by a wave of an invisible hand, another fascinating process began. A few days later, employees of the personnel service were already standing in Korotetsky's office and handed over a notice of dismissal. An order was issued a month later.

The Korotetsky case was backed up by a report from his colleague, psychologist and administrator Igor Salikhov. On day X, the latter was receiving his own patients in the next office and, having heard the insolent word "blowjob", he also could not refrain from complaining about his "dissolving" colleague.

- Psychologist Salikhov, who has the gift of hearing through walls, caught several words I uttered, including "blowjob", while he perfectly understood, could not help but understand that I was not doing something supernatural with the patient, but collecting anamnesis. I wrote a denunciation. Together with the head of the dispensary, they twisted everything to such an extent that in an instant I turned from a psychiatrist into a pervert. The leadership was sharpened for dismissal, they needed an excuse to get rid of me because I, as they put it earlier, "fought for payments." And so they got this reason, having cooperated, got it.

The handwriting on the complaint filed on behalf of the offended patient does not match the handwriting from the documents she filled out with her own hand at the reception, the doctor said.

The ethical commission, which is appointed in such controversial situations, was not held in the medical institution. In any case, Korotetsky was not invited to her.

Psychiatrist Sergei Korotetskiy considers his dismissal to be illegal and unfair and is trying to be reinstated in office through the courts.

On May 25, a regular meeting was held at the Preobrazhensky District Court of Moscow.

The defendant in the process is the Psychiatric Clinical Hospital No. 4 named after P.B. Gannushkina, the third party is the Moscow City Health Department.

Korotetsky's trademark surprise was a piece of paper from the labor inspection, which the doctor presented to the judge.

Previously, the dismissed person appealed to the department with a message about the violation of his labor rights, expressed in illegal dismissal.

State Labor Inspector Tatyana Kochkova from the Federal Service for Labor and Employment in Moscow, in her reply to the dismissed person, confirmed the violations in the actions of the administration of the Psychiatric Clinical Hospital No. 4. The medical institution was sent a warning about the inadmissibility of violations under five articles of the labor code (article 192-193 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, part 4 of article 84.1 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, article 140 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, article 236 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation).

According to the plaintiff's representatives, the judge, who is examining the labor dispute between Korotetsky and the hospital, subordinate to the Moscow Department of Health, demanded to comment on the document of the State Labor Inspectorate, to which the defendant's representatives could not find what to answer.

In other words, having received an official warning about the inadmissibility of further violations of the Labor Code regarding the dismissal of employees, the administration of the Psychiatric Clinical Hospital should have at least somehow revised its policy and improved, perhaps by reinstating the doctors who had been dismissed for reasons that were sucked from the finger. But the authorities do not want to "correct" in relation to Korotetsky.

- A conversation with a subject who came for examination and declared the impossibility of getting pregnant, on the topic, inter alia, of sex does not form a disciplinary offense on the part of a psychiatrist, since sex life is an integral part of a person's life and refers to his mental activity. Otherwise, gynecologists, proctologists, mammologists could also be held accountable for violation of ethical and moral standards, the examination that doctors are obliged to carry out during the examination process would have to be regarded as "lecherous actions", - comments the representative of Korotetsky in court, a lawyer Nelly Gusarova.

It is possible to determine whether a patient suffers from a mental illness or does not suffer, it is possible only when collecting an anamnesis of the patient's life - that is, a set of information about the subject, obtained by interviewing the subject himself. In psychiatric practice, comprehensive research is critical to making a correct diagnosis. During the examination, a clinical-psychopathological method is used, which, in addition to collecting anamnesis, also includes clinical observation and clinical conversation.

In addition to information about heredity, social conditions, the presence of somatic diseases, the doctor has the right to collect information about the patient's sexual life, says the representative.

Stand up for the psychiatrist and colleagues.

“If a doctor receives information that there are any violations in the patient’s family and sexual life, which also fall within the competence of the psychiatrist, he MUST obtain information about the patient’s sex life,” comments psychiatrist Mikhail Pervushin.

Korotetsky, having learned about the disharmony in family and sexual life, had every right and even duty to ask additional clarifying questions. Oral sex has many synonyms - borrowings from foreign languages: fellatio, penilination, phallatorism. The psychiatrist used a simpler word so that the patient understood it for sure. The doctor did not speak to the patient in a rude manner, did not use profanity, did not do anything incorrect, just did his job, a routine moment. The example with the "Becker method" is rather jaded, there is nothing new and "vulgar" in it, the interlocutor adds.

Novye Izvestia appealed to the reception room of the chief physician of the "Psychiatric Clinical Hospital No. 4 named after V.I. P.B. Gannushkin” Larisa Burygina. The secretary forwarded the request to the press service, and the press service sent a request to the Moscow Department of Health.

Korotetsky's immediate supervisor - head of the dispensary department, psychiatrist of the Psychoneurological Dispensary No. 3 branch of the Psychiatric Clinical Hospital No. 4 Natalya Kuplinova refused to talk to the Novye Izvestia special correspondent, saying: “I don’t know you and I will not talk to you. Goodbye, ”and then hung up. The head of the dispensary did not answer new calls.

The editorial staff sent a written request to the Moscow Department of Health. No response was received at the time of publication.