A famous Russian doctor was fired from a Perm hospital where he was the head of the medical facility's anaesthesiology and intensive care department. He was booted out because of a video footage of him physically beating a male patient who had just underwent heart surgery.

The incident actually happened in February, but the 57-second video was posted on YouTube on Wednesday, July 3, and has since become viral with almost 20,000 views.

Dr Andrey Votyakov, the physician, was seen in the video punching the helpless middle-aged male patient at the Federal Cardo-Surgery Centre in Perm. The incident was preceded by the two having a heated argument.

Being so tired after a long shift, the patient's abusive language caused the doctor to become angry and expressed it by hitting the man's face and slamming his fist on the man's heart, which possibly caused the patient's death after a short time.

"As soon as I came into the room with my team he started to call me various derogative names. And I just got blown away by it," the doctor was quoted by Nine News.

"We had spent so much time with his very complicated case to help him recover and he said not a single word of gratitude. And then the chronic tiredness added to it. I got carried away, and I punched him several times," he narrated.

Mr Votyakov later apologised to the family of the man for his behaviour, but it was too late to save his job despite his untarnished record in the hospital. Sergey Sukhanov, the boss of the erring medic, fired him on Thursday.

The Perm police, who saw the disturbing video on YouTube, started an investigation into the incident after viewing the physical abuse, which they want to find out if it was the direct cause of the patient's death.