Doctor Tareq Kamleh, who has joined ISIS in Syria, was awarded the Golden Speculum (inset) for bedding the most colleagues.
A PRIZE for the most promiscuous intern at Royal Adelaide Hospital that was once awarded to Adelaide-trained ISIS doctor Tareq Kamleh has been condemned by the health minister.
The “Golden Speculum” award is presented by RAH interns to the colleague who sleeps with the most members of staff.
The lewd award, which is not endorsed by the RAH, has been running for at least a decade and is presented at an end-of- year interns’ dinner.
It is understood that a consolation prize, known as the “Plastic Speculum”, is given to the intern who tried the hardest to win the major award.
Dr Kamleh, the Adelaide paediatric doctor who turned his back on his country to join the ISIS terrorist organisation, is understood to have won the Golden Speculum in 2011.
A speculum is a medical instrument used to examine body orifices.
SA’s Health Minister Jack Snelling has criticised the joke award, saying he expected better from “our next generation of doctors and medical professionals”.
“I would have thought in 2015 that these sorts of awards would be behind us,” he said.
Mr Snelling said he believed most South Australians would be shocked that medical professionals would award titles for promoting promiscuity.
He said that the behaviour was inappropriate in any workplace, but especially in our hospitals.
“I will be calling upon the AMA (Australian Medical Association) and SASMOA (South Australian Salaried Medical Officers Association) to unequivocally condemn this behaviour and bring these awards to an end,” he said.
Twitter user @_missContrary posted on January this year: “A girl I know won the Golden Speculum for being the sluttiest intern Dr at the RAH. Hilarious!”
A former colleague from the RAH confirmed Dr Kamleh had also won the award. “He won this stupid award at Royal Adelaide, where they voted him the intern who had slept with the most girls,” he said.
AMA SA president Dr Patricia Montanaro said “joke awards” had been running for many years but perhaps it was time to end them.
“At their best they are in good spirit and offend no one and at their worst they are not only inappropriate, they can cause real harm,” Dr Montanaro said. “All organisations, whether they are social or sporting clubs, professional groups or workplaces, need to look at these sorts of things very carefully.
“Some old traditions need to be retired to the history books, as relics of an earlier time, and this is probably one of them.”
The Sunday Mail could not reach SASMOA for comment. However past president Dr David Pope said he had no knowledge of the award but believed it was something the interns did “in jest”.
“It has no meaning … it’s purely done for their own entertainment,” he said.
Dr Pope said the issue of the award was “not a matter for the association”.
“It is a matter for the medical students themselves,” he said. “We would want to know what the context was before we pass judgment.”