Thomas Herbst
Introduction
Thomas Herbst is a British consultant anaesthetist who was suspended from practising for six months after a medical tribunal found he had fallen asleep while in charge of an anaesthetised patient in an operating theatre. At the time of the incident he worked as a locum consultant anaesthetist, including at the South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre at Epsom General Hospital. A Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) tribunal in January 2024 found his actions amounted to serious professional misconduct, and a further tribunal in September 2025 went on to direct his erasure from the medical register — the sanction known as being struck off.
Background Information
Herbst qualified as a doctor in 1988 and worked as a locum consultant anaesthetist at various sites in London and the surrounding area. At the time of the events he was practising as a consultant anaesthetist at the South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre at Epsom General Hospital, Epsom and St Helier University Hospital NHS Trust. News coverage of the 2024 hearing described him as a 61-year-old consultant from East Sheen in Richmond-upon-Thames. The 2022 incident was not his first: at the time of the incident he was already subject to a warning from the General Medical Council (GMC) for falling asleep in theatre in 2020, while another colleague was completing an operation.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Adjudicated vs. alleged. The findings below are those of Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service tribunals, made on the balance of probabilities. They are regulatory findings, not criminal convictions. Herbst initially denied falling asleep in theatre and later accepted he may have been ‘slightly snoozing’.
On 27 September 2022, Herbst anaesthetised a patient for a shoulder arthroscopy procedure and then fell asleep in the operating theatre. A fellow anaesthetist, referred to at the hearing as Dr A, said a nurse asked him to come and check that the anaesthetised patient was okay; he found Herbst asleep and received no verbal response when he called his name. “He was in a deep sleep and he only woke up after I repeatedly tapped him on his shoulder,” Dr A told the hearing. A theatre support assistant, Ms B, said she had seen Herbst asleep on a chair next to the anaesthesia machine as the surgeon was putting “knife to skin”.
When asked if he was fit for work, Herbst drank a cup of black coffee and insisted he was fine, but began speaking incoherently and repeating himself, and was unsteady on his feet. Later, outside a changing room, he struggled to complete a timesheet while his scrub trousers kept falling down without him noticing. The January 2024 Tribunal found that Herbst had attended work when he was unfit to do so, had been asleep while in charge of an anaesthetised patient in an operating theatre and could not be easily roused, and had been speaking incoherently and unsteady on his feet during the incident.
Herbst claimed he was tired on the day of the operation after spending most of the previous evening completing his tax return. In a letter to the GMC he wrote: “I apologise for any inconvenience caused by my illness. I felt tired and generally unwell and it would have been better to have stayed at home,” adding that he “did not want to cause the cancellation of patients who had waited a long time for their operation.” In evidence he said “humans get sick”, and told the tribunal that NHS workers used to be applauded for going into work, yet the GMC had decided to “prosecute him in a horrible way” when he had “become ill probably through working in a hospital”. He initially denied falling asleep, but later admitted he “may have closed his eyes, been daydreaming, or ‘slightly snoozing’”.
Public Reaction and Consequences
A Medical Practitioners Tribunal hearing took place between 3 and 12 January 2024. It considered that falling asleep during a procedure on a patient under anaesthesia was a serious matter, and that Herbst’s actions amounted to serious professional misconduct. Tribunal chairman Claire Lindley said: “The tribunal found Dr Herbst had fallen asleep in theatre and could not easily be roused, and that shortly thereafter he was speaking incoherently.” She noted that at the time of the incident he was subject to a GMC warning for similar conduct, and that “the tribunal noted the patient was potentially at risk and his poor responses after he was awoken, posed a potential further risk to patients had he continued with the theatre list”.
The tribunal suspended Herbst from practising for six months, after he offered to cut down the number of shifts he worked each week. Lindley ordered him to face a review hearing later in the year, and the case was reported by the Evening Standard in Yahoo News on 30 January 2024.
Current Status
At a review hearing that began on 24 September 2025, an MPTS tribunal considered the case again. It recorded its decision on impairment as impaired and directed erasure from the medical register, with the decision dated 24 September 2025 — the removal of Herbst’s name from the register of medical practitioners, recorded by MedicWatch under the heading “Thomas Herbst — Struck off the register”.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The erasure direction removed Herbst from the medical register he needed in order to practise, ending a career that had begun with his qualification in 1988 and that had already been curtailed by the 2024 suspension. The sequence of regulatory action — a GMC warning in 2020 for falling asleep in theatre, a six-month suspension in 2024 for being asleep in charge of an anaesthetised patient, and erasure directed in September 2025 — records a doctor removed from practice following the 2022 theatre incident and a prior history of similar conduct. Unless any appeal against the direction were to succeed, he can no longer work as a doctor in the United Kingdom.