Samuel Stefan
Introduction
Samuel Stefan is a former UK doctor — a colorectal surgeon — whose name was erased from the medical register by a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) tribunal on 3 December 2025, at the end of a substantive hearing that had run from 10 November to 3 December 2025. The tribunal found proved a series of allegations that, while working at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth between August 2022 and February 2023, he engaged in sexually motivated conduct towards three junior colleagues across four separate occasions. It found that the conduct constituted sexual harassment under the Equality Act 2010 and was an abuse of his more senior position. Erasure is the most serious sanction available to the regulator: it removes a practitioner from the register entirely, meaning he is no longer permitted to practise medicine in the United Kingdom.
Background Information
Stefan was registered with the General Medical Council under registration number 7080797 and worked as a colorectal surgeon at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth. The case concerns his conduct towards three junior colleagues, referred to in the determination as Mr A, Mr B and Mr C. The first incident took place on 5 August 2022, when Stefan arranged, through an application, to meet Mr A in a hospital toilet.
According to the account put before the tribunal, the two men had been chatting online, although they were unknown to each other, and had arranged to meet in the toilet. The man who came to the meeting understood it to be a mutually convenient place and had no intention of having sex with Stefan. He told the panel he was “shocked, numb and scared” when the cubicle door opened and Stefan beckoned him over completely naked.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Allegations vs. findings. No criminal proceedings are recorded in the determination. The findings are regulatory findings by an MPTS tribunal on the civil standard (the balance of probabilities) and are not criminal convictions.
The tribunal found that on 5 August 2022 Stefan arranged, via an application, to meet Mr A in hospital toilets and there engaged in sexually motivated conduct towards him. The allegations were that this conduct was without consent, sexually motivated, and an abuse of his more senior position.
The misconduct did not stop there. On 9 December 2022 and again on 12 December 2022, whilst working with Mr B, Stefan was found to have engaged in repeated acts of sexual misconduct, including unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature, explicit sexual comments and requests for sexual acts; the tribunal also found that he tried to kiss Mr B and exposed himself to him. On 24 February 2023, whilst working with Mr C, he made repeated unwanted sexual contact with Mr C’s body — in the account reported from the hearing, he repeatedly tried to touch the man’s thigh and genitals while they were on the hospital wards.
A feature the tribunal treated as especially serious was the timeline. The misconduct involving Mr B and Mr C occurred after Stefan had already been investigated by the Trust and by the police following the first incident involving Mr A — conduct the tribunal said demonstrated a blatant disregard for professional boundaries. The harassment therefore continued even once his employer and the police were aware of the initial allegation.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The tribunal found the allegations proved and determined that Stefan’s fitness to practise was impaired. It found a pattern of behaviour across four separate occasions involving three junior colleagues that was incompatible with the standards expected of a registered medical practitioner. The conduct was found to be sexually motivated and to constitute sexual harassment in the workplace, and it was aggravated by his failure to work collaboratively with junior colleagues and by a persistent and continuing lack of insight.
Stefan did not attend the tribunal and was not represented. The panel heard there had been no insight, remorse, remediation or engagement with the General Medical Council or the tribunal, and it found no mitigating factors: no apology, no expression of remorse, no recognition of the seriousness of the misconduct. It concluded that his conduct fell far below the standards expected of a doctor and that fellow members of the medical profession would consider his behaviour deplorable.
The tribunal directed that Stefan’s name be erased from the medical register and imposed an immediate order, so that the erasure took effect without waiting for an appeal period to run. It was of the view that public confidence would be undermined if he were permitted to practise unrestricted, given the incompatibility of his conduct with continued registration, the serious nature of his misconduct, and the assessed risk of repetition.
Current Status
Stefan is struck off the GMC register. The tribunal’s decision of 3 December 2025, at the end of a substantive hearing that had run from 10 November, took the form of erasure with an immediate order. Erasure is otherwise indefinite, though it can be reviewed after a minimum of five years. No criminal proceedings are recorded in the determination, and the published sources record no appeal, apology or public statement from Stefan, who did not engage with the regulatory process.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The erasure ends Stefan’s career as a doctor in the United Kingdom: removed from the register, he is no longer permitted to practise medicine, and because the tribunal judged erasure the only appropriate and proportionate sanction, the removal was made immediate rather than delayed. Findings of sexually motivated conduct towards three junior colleagues — sexual harassment under the Equality Act 2010, committed in abuse of a senior position, and continuing after Trust and police investigations — rank among the gravest workplace-misconduct findings the tribunal handles. Because the panel found no insight, no remorse and no remediation, nothing tempered the outcome, and any application to return to the register can be considered only after the five-year minimum review period has elapsed.