9 medical students suspended for partying with a corpse while on call at hospital

URUGUAY: Nine medical students have been suspended for partying with a corpse while they were on call at a hospital.

One intern moved the dead man’s body from a corridor next to A&E after it was left unattended.

They put a drink in his hand as they partied during one of their last shifts before becoming fully qualified doctors.

The dead man’s relatives are understood to have found him in a rest room they used at the Hospital de Clinicas in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo.

Eight of the nine students who took part in the bizarre toast have been suspended for a month.

The punishment means they will now qualify as fully-fledged doctors next year at the earliest instead of this July.

The student blamed for moving the body from A&E has been suspended indefinitely pending a full investigation.

Two superiors in charge of the students are also being investigated for not stopping them drinking alcohol while on duty.

The dead man, an OAP who was being cared for by a relative, had died earlier the same day in hospital and arrangements were being made to take him to a local morgue.

Fernando Tomasino, Deacon of the Faculty of Medicine at the university where the interns were students, published a letter on the institution’s website expressing his “profound pain” and “anger.”

Health director Jorge Quian said: “When there’s a mistake in medicine, there’s never a single person responsible.

“I think these youngsters committed a bad error but there are other people at blame here, the superiors who were supposed to be in charge of them and hospital bosses.”