Doctor's future in doubt over diet pill fraud case

Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

A young doctor working in a busy emergency department has been charged with forging prescriptions for weight-loss pills to keep her awake while working long hours.

The doctor appeared in the Auckland District Court this week to face fraud charges over four faked prescriptions for the drugs over an 18-month period until January this year.

Defence lawyer Jo Wickliffe argued the doctor should be discharged without conviction and her name kept secret because of the damage it would do to her promising career.

The court heard the doctor forged the prescriptions to obtain sibutramine hydrochloride, also known as Reductil, because fellow doctors told her they were using the substance to help stay awake.

Ms Wickliffe said the doctor was not a drug addict and the alleged offending had happened at a time of great stress before an upcoming rotation working long hours in a hospital emergency room.

"She was afraid of killing someone by missing something," Ms Wickliffe told the court. The doctor was ambitious, highly intelligent and had a promising future, she said.

She asked Judge David Wilson QC to discharge the doctor without conviction because the consequences of her alleged crime were far outweighed by the gravity of offending.

If a doctor is convicted of a crime punishable by a jail term of more than three months, the court must notify the Medical Council. The professional conduct committee of the council then determines what action, if any, is taken.

Ms Wickliffe said the doctor feared that if convicted she would lose the job she had been offered and the "black mark" of a Medical Council inquiry would count against her in future job applications.

Judge Wilson rejected that submission and said: "I do not see the injustice in that."

He said the alleged offending was not trivial, but premeditated and repetitive, and "hit at the heart of the responsibilities of a doctor". He then refused the application for the doctor to be discharged without conviction.

In submissions for the police, Sergeant Glenn Boyd-Clark referred to another case of a doctor forging prescriptions to feed his addiction to opiates.

Despite the offending being far more serious, Mr Boyd-Clark said the addicted doctor was not struck off the medical register. He noted the Medical Council performed a rehabilitative role, as well as a disciplinary one.

The case has been adjourned to allow the doctor to decide how to plead.

She has been granted interim name suppression.

Spokesman George Symmes said the Medical Council took a serious view on fraud. Doctors were in a position of trust and other health professionals had to be able to rely on the integrity of a doctor. However, Mr Symmes emphasised the council process was rehabilitative, not punitive.

"We want to help doctors get back to work."