Cardiac surgeons on a selection committee at St. Paul's Hospital manipulated the hiring process for a training position so they could hire a student who was the son of their boss and of a provincial cabinet minister, documents show.
Officials from the faculty of medicine at the University of British Columbia, which oversees the hiring process for the publicly funded residency positions, found the situation "disturbing" and "very challenging," and there were many pages of legal advice on the matter, according to the heavily censored documents obtained from UBC through a request under the province's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
The documents do not name the student, but The Tyee reported in 2013 that Kevin Lichtenstein received a residency position in cardiac surgery at St. Paul's Hospital through the University of British Columbia, where his father Sam Lichtenstein is the head of the division of cardiovascular surgery.