This story was first published in May 2024.
Nearly 40 doctors in five years have been censured by the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal for actions ranging from poor record keeping and prescribing – to sexual abuse. Katie Harris looks at what each doctor did and the penalties they received.
We trust our doctors with our most personal health concerns and examinations.
While most adhere to the strict rules of their profession, some fall foul of the standards expected of them - and are brought before the tribunal.
If they are found guilty under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003, punishment can be handed down.
Penalties range from censure to suspension, conditions on their future practice, fines up to $30,000, tribunal costs - and the most severe of all: cancelling a practitioner’s registration.
In the past five years nearly all censured doctors were found to have committed professional misconduct and 11 had their registrations cancelled by the tribunal, meaning they cannot practise for a set period.
The Herald has summarised each penalty decision against doctors on the tribunal website since the start of 2019 - but nearly half have been granted name suppression, meaning the public and their patients may never know that their doctor has committed misconduct.
Dr Julian Meredith Clive White was censured and had his registration cancelled after he struck his teenage daughter in the face and committed dishonesty offences, including forging documents to get a $25,000 loan in his wife’s name.
The convictions, together with the fact the doctor failed to disclose on his application for an annual practising certificate (APC) that he was being investigated by Australian medical authorities, amounted to professional misconduct.
It’s not the first time he’s been reprimanded. In late 1999, Dr Meredith White, as he was known then, was struck off by the then Medical Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal for conduct including reusing hypodermic needles on patients and tampering with an after-hours emergency phone line.
A 2023 Tribunal ruled he could not reapply for his registration for 12 months, and ordered him to complete an ethics course as well as paying a little more than $11,000 in fines and costs.
Dr Rakesh Chawdhry carried out fake medical procedures on male patients so he could indecently assault them.
The former Christchurch GP sexually abused more than a dozen men, mainly through the use of a “milking procedure” where he tried to induce erections.
He was jailed in 2018 for four years and three months after being found guilty at a judge-alone trial at the Christchurch District Court on one charge of unlawful sexual connection and 11 of indecent assault.
He defended all the charges, arguing any physical touching was part of a legitimate medical procedure he referred to as “the milking technique” or “milking the urethra”.
Three more complainants came forward following his trial’s publicity and he pleaded guilty to further charges.
The tribunal censured Chawdhry and cancelled his registration. It ordered him to pay $10,556, and to undergo a sexual misconduct assessment test if he ever wished to reapply for registration.
The tribunal found Dr S’ sexual relationship with a male patient amounted to negligence and a departure from professional standards.
“When looking at the conduct holistically, it was not simply naïve or unwise, but deliberate and unethical. It was aggravated by the fact that the doctor was repeatedly deceptive about the nature of her relationship with the patient.”
She also prescribed him controlled opioids just seven months after being disciplined by the tribunal after she was found in 2018 to be prescribing medicines to family members that were intended for her own use.
Most of the charge details were established by way of Dr S admitting liability.
The tribunal granted Dr S permanent name suppression in its 2023 decision, but she was censured, and had her registration cancelled for 12 months.
She was ordered to pay $78,771 in costs and must undergo a psychiatric assessment and complete an education programme about medical ethics before she reapplies to be registered.
While registered as a doctor Aashish Vinay Raj drove drunk and entered a casino from which he had previously been trespassed.
The Auckland doctor, who does not hold a practising certificate and has not practised since 2018, has a history of offending and a substance use disorder.
He admitted to the tribunal that his actions amounted to professional misconduct in that the convictions brought, or were likely to bring, discredit to the medical profession and/or that they reflected adversely on his fitness to practise.
In 2023 he was censured, ordered to pay $10,000, suspended from practising for two years and six months and had conditions upon his return to practising imposed.
Former Invercargill doctor Nelson Nagoor was censured, suspended and fined after he failed to tell a patient he had cancer.
His patient, Joshua Linder, died before the tribunal was able to hear the charge.
Although the tribunal accepted in 2022 that it was possible the patient presented late with an advanced lesion which in an expert’s opinion had almost certainly metastasised already and that earlier referral would not have altered the outcome, it found the doctor failed to follow widely accepted best practice clinical guidelines.
“This failure delayed any opportunity for early intervention and left the patient not knowing that he had potentially life-threatening cancer which required urgent referral to specialist care.”
Nagoor had his registration suspended for three months, conditions imposed on his practice and was ordered to pay a fine of $5000 as well as $26,000 in costs.
He accepted most of the particulars of the charge amounted to professional misconduct and is now retired.
Dr Poanere Tapukura Rairi was found to have prescribed 61 prescription items, some of which were Class C controlled drugs, to a doctor he worked closely with and who had a risk of addiction and misuse.
The Auckland doctor accepted the charge that he did not complete an adequate assessment of the doctor’s medical history or keep sufficient clinical notes and ignored advice from another doctor about her substance use disorder.
In 2023 the tribunal censured Rairi, imposed conditions on his practising, including that he must complete an education course and have his dispensing monitored, and ordered him to pay $26,000 in costs.
In February 2018 Dr Teimur Youssefi was convicted of using a forged document after he falsified a certificate of good standing from the Malta Medical Council in applying for provisional registration in New Zealand.
Youssefi had earlier been found guilty of failing to meet the ethical standard requiring that “a doctor shall by his conduct and in all matters set a high standard” by the Malta Medical Council in relation to an incident involving a pelvic examination.
As well as this, the tribunal found he behaved unprofessionally towards his colleagues and that his actions amounted to professional misconduct.
He was censured, had conditions imposed on his practising certificate and ordered to pay $28,500 in costs.
In pursuing a relationship with a man whose wife was her patient and disclosing the wife’s private health information to the man, Dr O was found to have committed professional misconduct and had brought discredit to the profession.
When the wife became aware of the relationship in mid-October 2018 she sought medical treatment for the stress-related symptoms and a receptionist booked her in to see Dr O, with whom she knew her husband was having an affair.
“At this point, the doctor raised the relationship with her colleagues and said that she did not feel comfortable treating Mrs N. Mrs N was seen by a different doctor that day. Dr O sent Mr N a text message about Mrs N’s appointment in breach of her privacy,” the tribunal ruling said.
Dr O faced the tribunal in 2022, charged with sexual misconduct and a breach of confidentiality.
Aspects of the charge were established and Dr O was censured.
The tribunal placed conditions on her practice for three years, including a supervision requirement, and she was directed to pay $31,234 in costs.
Christchurch doctor Preechapon Tovaranonte used an alias on social media to attack his former employers, accusing one medical centre of “disgusting behaviour” and the other of dangerous waiting times.
Tovaranonte, known as Pleayo Tovaranonte, also shared false information on LinkedIn and another website.
The tribunal censured Tovaranonte in 2022, imposed conditions on his practise and ordered him to pay $40,000 in costs as well as a $8000 fine.
On March 29 2021, Dr A was convicted in the Auckland District Court of two representative charges of indecent assault for his offending against two of his family members who lived with him in 2009 while they studied at university.
The offending included getting into bed with the teenagers, placing his hands on and stroking their buttocks and lifting up one of the girls’ shirts.
Although the paediatrician had suggested to the tribunal there was “no sexual motive” to his offending, the panel said it was difficult to comprehend how he pleaded guilty to the offending and then could ask them to accept there was nothing sexual about the conduct.
“Patients place significant trust in members of the medical profession. They tell health practitioners personal information that they might share only with those very close to them, or indeed no one at all. They allow health practitioners, who are often strangers to them, to touch them and their children,” the ruling said.
“Conduct such as that of Dr A erodes not only the trust that can be placed in him as a doctor but the trust that can be placed in the medical profession by the public at large.”
The tribunal ordered his registration to be cancelled, imposed conditions to be satisfied before he reapplied and banned him from reapplying for three years.
He was also censured and ordered to pay $9150.
When a patient came to Auckland GP Kul Vant Singh in December 2017 seeking relief for an intimate issue, he violated her.
Two years later Singh was found guilty of sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection in the Manukau District Court and was sentenced to nearly three years’ imprisonment. He was later charged with professional misconduct.
Despite accepting the conviction as proof he committed the offence, when Singh appeared before the tribunal in 2022 on a charge for his offending and retrospectively amending his clinical notes, he continued to deny his conduct was sexually motivated.
The tribunal found the particulars of the charge were established and stated sexual offending by a medical professional against any victim must always be regarded as “morally, ethically, and professionally repugnant”.
Singh’s registration was canned and he was barred from reapplying for registration for 12 months. He was censured, had conditions imposed, including being required to undertake a sexual misconduct assessment test, and was mandated to pay $11,011 in costs.
Hamilton gynecologist and obstetrician Dr Nalendra Appanna was on a date when he decided to perform an STI test on his companion and record himself performing sex acts on her at his clinic.
The pair had met on a “sugar daddies” website, Seeking Arrangements, where the woman had joined to make some extra money and Appanna was looking for a submissive partner for a “dom-sub” relationship.
During their first in-person meeting the then 26-year-old submitted to the tribunal that Appanna, who once moonlighted as a fetish ball organiser, told her he required everyone he had sexual contact with to have a sexually transmitted infection [STI] test.
Alone at the office with the woman, Appanna performed the test during which he “fingered” her in a sexual manner.
The woman said he then tied her to a chair, used vibrators on her to achieve orgasm and performed oral sex on her.
On May 21 Appanna messaged Ms J to tell her the test result had come back clear. He never sent the results to her GP.
Following this encounter, she said the pair met on Wednesday nights at his office where they would drink and Appanna would make videos of himself using sex toys on her. They never had intercourse.
At one point he also gave her half a midazolam sedative tablet.
Several months later, when Appanna was working in Australia, he sent the woman a photo of a patient in an operating theatre.
Appanna’s conduct is described as predatory by Waikato Sexual Assault Assessment and Treatment Service lead clinician Dr Kate Taylor, who made the complaint about Appanna on behalf of Ms J.
The tribunal found Appanna guilty of professional misconduct and suspended him for three months.
He was censured, ordered to undergo 12 months of supervision, required to inform colleagues or employers and to pay $74,296 in costs.
Appanna recently appealed a decision not to renew his practising certificate but this was dismissed.
Following a physical dispute with his then-wife, Dr D was convicted of two charges of assaulting a person he is in a family relationship with and one charge of threatening behaviour.
The pair were engaged in a domestic dispute when he poured three alcoholic drinks on her, tore her shirt and prodded her torso with a fork while calling her fat, leaving scratches.
When Ms D called an ambulance for help, an agreed summary of facts said communications staff heard Dr D say he would “shoot police” if they arrived and threaten to kill her. When police got there they witnessed the doctor with his hands around the woman’s neck.
Dr D accepted his offending amounted to professional misconduct and the tribunal in 2022 censured him and imposed the condition that he must notify employers of its decision for the next three years.
He was granted name suppression and ordered to pay $11,000 in costs.
When the tribunal convened in February 2022 to hear a charge against Dr Christopher Paltridge, it wasn’t the first time the doctor had been before a disciplinary panel.
Prior to the latest charge relating to conduct including importing testosterone and steroids for a drug-seeker who was already brain-damaged from drug abuse, he was found guilty in 2011 of prescribing hormone therapy to menopausal women without consulting or examining them.
The panel established his recent misconduct involved importing human growth hormones and performance and image-enhancing drugs in the names of his patients, who never received the medication. He agreed that his conduct amounted to professional misconduct.
One of the patients was living overseas and another was dead.
His conduct earned him a six-month suspension, censure and $40,000 in fines and costs.
Conditions on his practising were imposed for three years, including having to tell employers of the tribunal’s decision and being banned from prescribing testosterone.
The tribunal censured Dr N in 2021 and ordered her to pay $30,000 in costs after she breached her ethical obligations by accessing and viewing the records of 35 patients when there was no clinical reason for her to do so.
The tribunal also imposed conditions including that she undergo quarterly audits of her patient records for three years, undertake an educational programme on medical ethics, and that she must advise any employers of the decision for three years following the decision.
She did not dispute the charge, or that her conduct amounted to professional misconduct.
At the time of these events, she was suffering from acute anxiety and undergoing a relationship break-up with her fiancé, the decision said.
Dr N was granted name suppression.
On two occasions Dr E tried unsuccessfully to have pharmacists dispense to him tramadol, an opioid pain medication.
In the first instance, he wrote a script out in front of a pharmacist for Loratadine, Flucloxacillin and Tramadol. The pharmacists dispensed all the medications except for the tramadol. He accepted this and left.
The second incident occurred when he amended a script from another doctor by adding a prescription for 50 tablets of Tramadol 50mg.
He was caught out when the pharmacist felt suspicious and contacted the prescribing practitioner to verify the script. The prescriber then made a complaint to the Medical Council.
Dr E, who has name suppression, had argued that he made the alteration for treating an ankle injury and that he had altered the prescription as a whole because he added his own prescription for Tramadol.
However, the tribunal in 2021 established that both a breach of codified professional standards and falsifying documents had occurred.
He was censured, fined $2500, ordered to pay $36,000 in costs and ordered to engage a mentor, advise employers of the tribunal decision and have his self-prescribing monitored every six months.
Following the death of his mother in 2016, Dr Carl Knox began drinking heavily and taking illegal substances.
He took a break and then practised on and off for the next few years.
In July 2018, while he was under a monitoring arrangement following the identification of substance abuse issues, Knox was involved in an incident at a Returned Services Association and subsequently pleaded guilty and was convicted for injuring and assault offences.
He also pleaded guilty and was convicted of multiple driving offences, which he accepted reflected adversely on him as a medical practitioner.
In 2021 the tribunal found his conduct and the seriousness of the criminal convictions warranted it imposing a disciplinary sanction.
Knox was censured, ordered to pay $12,500 and to advise employers of the tribunal’s decision for two years following its decision and for a period of three years he must work under supervision and meet all conditions imposed by the Medical Council’s Health Committee.
Dr Paul Charles Bennett had an intimate relationship with a woman who had been his patient, and whom he undertook five consultations with when she was enrolled with another practitioner following their relationship commencing.
Although the doctor first denied engaging in any sexual conduct with the woman when a complaint was filed in 2018, he later recanted this.
The tribunal found the doctor did enter into and continue a sexual relationship with his patient and this clearly breached Medical Council standards.
“The tribunal also found that the doctor did mislead the Medical Council in denying the relationship. It was not until the Medical Council knew of the relationship that he retracted his denial,” the ruling said.
Bennett was censured, had his registration cancelled and was barred from reapplying until he has undertaken a sexual misconduct assessment test.
He was ordered to advise employers of the tribunal’s decision and had to pay $30,000 in costs.
Dr L came before the tribunal on a charge related to the blurring of boundaries between the practitioner’s professional and personal relationship with a patient.
According to an agreed summary of facts in or around late 2017 or early 2018 the doctor became aware that he had romantic feelings for the patient during a consultation and later they agreed she should see another GP at the practice.
In early 2018 the pair met and kissed on two occasions. However, the doctor also said there was a brief period of penetration on one occasion, which the woman said did not occur.
Dr L contacted the woman five to six times over the next month.
Both Dr L and the tribunal agreed the conduct amounted to professional misconduct and malpractice.
Dr L was censured, suspended for three months, ordered to pay $15,319 and has to abide by conditions including having a chaperone present at all consultations for female patients between the ages of 16 and 65 until he completed a Medical Council-directed professional development course.
Dr Simon Brainbridge had his registration cancelled and was ordered not to apply for two years and eight months after the tribunal found he entered into and maintained a sexual relationship with his patient over a lengthy period.
Bainbridge had treated the woman between 2011 and 2013, and from 2011 to 2018 the doctor maintained a sexual relationship with her.
He denied the charge and consistently denied the relationship existed.
The tribunal stated that not only does a power imbalance exist in any doctor-patient relationship, the patient in this case was vulnerable.
The tribunal ordered him to pay $58,000 and imposed conditions he needed to satisfy before returning to work, including undertaking a sexual misconduct assessment test.
Dr M wrote prescriptions for drugs, including opioid tramadol, for his own use in the names of his wife and son.
His actions, besides knowing the named persons were not the intended recipients, were also contrary to an agreement he had, dated October 2012.
The voluntary agreement with the Health Committee, which also required him to maintain total abstinence from alcohol and mood-changing drugs, was because the doctor had a history of alcohol dependence and opioid use.
The tribunal, which convened in 2021, found his conduct constituted a serious departure from accepted professional standards and warranted disciplinary sanction.
“Over a nine-year period he has inappropriately prescribed 169 medications in total, a number of which were drugs with a risk of abuse and dependency,” the ruling said.
He was granted name suppression, censured and was directed to pay $40,500.
While the tribunal said he was no longer practising at the time of the decision, if he considered returning conditions would be imposed.
The tribunal struck off Dr Judith Gill in 2022 after she signed up departing British and Australian backpackers for long-term healthcare subsidies at her clinic when they weren’t eligible.
The Auckland GP claimed more than $420,000 in funding by registering the 2618 ineligible patients.
In her statement, Gill said the investigation by the Medical Council’s investigatory body was redundant because she was retired and had already paid back the funding.
The tribunal found her actions fell well below the standard expected of a medical practitioner and censured her.
It ordered her to pay $173,837 and cancelled her registration.
In Aotearoa, all abortions must be performed within a licensed institution and must only be performed if two certifying consultants authorise it.
Dr E, who has name suppression, failed to follow these rules and he accepted his conduct amounted to professional misconduct.
The disciplinary charge he faced had several particulars, including that he failed to keep clear records, failed to ensure he had adequate knowledge of the medications or requirements and that he prescribed medicines contrary to the Medical Council’s statement on good prescribing practice.
He was censured by the tribunal in 2020, ordered to pay $30,000 and had conditions imposed on his practice.
When Dr T applied to have his practising certificate renewed in 2015 he disclosed to the Medical Council he had developed a dependency on cannabis, which he had been using to treat a medical condition.
Following the disclosure, the Medical Council’s health committee determined that the practitioner should undertake fortnightly random urine screening for six weeks to monitor the decreasing presence of cannabinoids in his urine, reducing to random monthly urine testing for 12 months.
From May 2015 to July 2017 he provided multiple urine samples which tested positive for Carboxy-THC, indicating cannabis use.
In 2020 the tribunal found he had breached his scope of practise, prescribed inappropriately and failed to comply with a drug testing programme. Aspects of the charge related to breaching his voluntary undertaking and using a false patient profile to submit urine tests were not established as professional misconduct.
The doctor, who had admitted some of the conduct, was censured, suspended for two months and had conditions imposed on his return to practice.
Those conditions specify that he must arrange a psychiatric assessment, complete a re-certification programme and undertake drug testing.
Dr T is also barred from working in any sole practice or as a locum, ordered to pay $31,528 and must undertake a recertification programme.
Following a tooth extraction and root canal, which left Dr N with left-sided neuralgic pain and facial pain, he developed an alcohol and drug addiction for which he sought various treatments.
Between June 2006 and June 2017, Dr N self-prescribed medications, including drugs of dependence, 76 times and prescribed medications to his family, which he did not document.
Doctors are advised to avoid writing prescriptions for themselves and those with whom they have a close personal relationship.
The doctor acknowledged his conduct warranted sanction and the tribunal in 2020 agreed.
He was censured, directed to pay $37,000 in costs and fines, and had conditions imposed on his practice.
Dr E altered a document from an administrator at the University of Otago’s Department of Anatomy to state that she had completed the four papers required for the Post Graduate Diploma in Surgical Anatomy when she had not. The doctor had only completed three of the four papers required.
She then provided this falsified letter to the UK’s General Medical Council when applying for registration and included the incorrect claim in her CV to the council.
The doctor was caught out when the UK Medical Council emailed the university to verify the diploma and the discrepancy was revealed.
A university manager advised the Medical Council of New Zealand of her conduct, which was then referred to the Council’s investigatory body, the Professional Conduct Committee.
Dr E admitted the charge, which was established by the tribunal in 2020.
She was censured, suspended for one month, had conditions imposed on her practising and ordered to pay $24,000.
For years Dr Ran Ben-Dom undertook unjustified clinical breast examinations, which continued despite the doctor promising his supervisors he would “utterly avoid” raising the topic of breast cancer prevention.
His conduct included failing to record several breast examinations and commenting “you know you’re very attractive, don’t you” during one breast examination.
One woman told the 2019 tribunal she came to an appointment for an unrelated issue and he repeatedly asked to conduct a breast examination and touched her breasts as if he were “milking a cow”.
The tribunal found his conduct was not clinically justified and was inappropriate.
Ben-Dom was censured, fined $5000, ordered to pay $160,000 in costs and had conditions imposed on his practising, including needing a chaperone when seeing female patients for any breast examination, for three years.
The Kāpiti doctor disagreed with the decision and unsuccessfully, with the exception of one altered condition, appealed both the tribunal’s ruling and penalties.
Dr H appeared before a tribunal in 2020 accused of behaving unprofessionally toward his colleagues and for failures while he was on call.
The tribunal found the doctor, who was granted name suppression, had refused to provide treatment advice about a patient to a doctor while he was on call and failed to come to the hospital within a reasonable time frame when asked.
“The doctor’s actions constituted malpractice and negligence, likely to, or did bring discredit to the profession.”
Five out of the seven particulars in the charge, two regarding his behaviour toward colleagues, were not established.
Dr H was censured and ordered to pay costs of $45,000.
Having been convicted of driving with excess breath alcohol and dangerous driving in 2018, Dr J was brought before the tribunal in 2019 accused of conduct that reflected adversely on his fitness to practise.
This was not his first alcohol-related offence, as he had previously been convicted of driving with excess blood alcohol and pleaded guilty to slapping his wife during an argument while he was intoxicated. He was granted a discharge without conviction, as was his wife who had also been charged over the incident.
The doctor admitted the offending, but not that it reflected adversely on his fitness to practise.
While the tribunal accepted that his alcohol issues never affected his work, it found they did reflect adversely on the Doctor’s fitness to practise.
He was censured, suspended for six months and had conditions imposed on his resumption to practise.
Dr J was also required to pay $12,451 in costs.
Dr Medhane Hagos Mesgena was censured, fined $2000 and ordered to pay $40,000 in costs after he accepted he had committed professional misconduct.
A majority decision in 2020 found he did not adequately assess a 12-year-old patient with developmental impairments whom a nurse had established was most likely sexually active.
The child had the developmental age of 6-year-old and disclosed to him someone had forced her to have sex.
It was alleged the doctor did not adequately examine her as he did not do a pelvic examination. His notes were inadequate and were not made in a timely manner.
The tribunal also found he failed in his documentation of consultations and care, and failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that patient health information was safe when he left his car unlocked with patient information in it at Napier Airport for more than two months.
The Tribunal found Dr R’s note-taking for two patients he was treating with the opioid pethidine was not up to standard and he failed to maintain a controlled drugs register.
However, he was absolved of part of the charge related to an allegation that he prescribed the drug inappropriately or excessively.
“The doctor had made attempts to find alternatives and solutions for the two patients. The tribunal commended the doctor for finding ways in which their conditions could be addressed without the use of pethidine,” the tribunal’s 2019 ruling said.
Dr R was granted permanent name suppression, censured and directed to pay $24,110.
Dr Deane Diesel Drew was found guilty of professional misconduct after he became involved in inappropriate relationships with four vulnerable women patients.
The tribunal in 2019 proceeded on an agreed summary of facts, in which the doctor admitted his conduct was contrary to accepted standards of medical practice.
According to the charge sheet, Drew prescribed a medication to one of his patients that was not best practice and at higher than the recommended amount, despite being notified she was abusing the drugs.
He started a relationship with his first patient in the early 90s. He told her during one consultation that he “wondered if [they] would be lovers,” and over the first year of his treating her, he gave her gifts of money, flowers, lingerie and took her out for meals.
He first treated another woman in 1993, but did not start a sexual relationship with her until 2016.
On October 3 that year, he sent her a text message saying “please don’t lay a complaint as it could ruin my life and that would be pretty harsh for abusing your trust and treating you badly”.
The relationship ended less than a week later.
Drew was struck off and had conditions on re-applying imposed, including undertaking a sexual misconduct assessment test.
He was also censured, fined $3000 and ordered to pay $28,966 in costs.
Mitchell Dean Feller was the doctor behind a controversial cancer “cure” used by rugby legend Sir Colin Meads and TV builder John “Cocksy” Cocks, all of whom are now deceased.
PureCure - a company 50 per cent owned by Feller - made more than $300,000 from patients, telling them the chlorine water would kill cancer cells.
In 2019 Feller was brought before the tribunal for conducting a clinical trial without necessary approvals and failing to adequately follow ethical guidelines.
The charge noted he failed to disclose his financial interest in the product, Te Kiri Gold, and used a patient group that was vulnerable.
Patients, some terminally ill, were charged $1600 for an eight-week trial of the water.
Meads and Cocks both used the drink as a treatment and originally claimed it had a positive effect on their health. Meads, however, backtracked after initially speaking of its healing properties.
The tribunal found that the charge was made out in all its particulars as misconduct, malpractice and negligence.
Feller was censured, struck off and ordered to pay over $60,000 in costs and fines.
Ōamaru doctor Stephen James Dawson indecently assaulted and exploited an “obviously highly vulnerable” woman who had a mental age of between 12 and 15 years.
He was brought before the Tribunal in 2019 after he was convicted in the Timaru District Court of two representative charges, one for indecent assault and another for exploitatively doing an indecent act on a person who had a significant impairment.
His offending was characterised in the ruling as involving touching her breasts while purporting to be conducting a medical examination, taking photos and videos while she was topless, touching her breasts in a spa pool and making advances on her while her mother was away.
Dawson had been her GP since 1997 and had become close friends with the woman and her mother.
He accepted the charge brought against him in the tribunal and his convictions were likely to discredit the profession and reflected adversely on his fitness to practise.
The tribunal censured the doctor, cancelled his registration and ordered him to complete a sexual misconduct assessment test, alert the Medical Council’s standards team and sign a document confirming he would comply with all council requirements for three years if he was to reapply.
He was ordered to pay $3240 and directed to tell employers of the tribunal’s findings for the next three years.
Although Nelson doctor Samuel John Simpson Wilson admitted to covertly filming women in the bathroom and women’s changing room of Nelson Hospital and in his home, he escaped being struck off by the tribunal.
Wilson was convicted in the Nelson District Court on eight charges of making intimate visual recordings between June 2012 and August 2014.
As well as the covert cameras he placed in bathrooms and changing rooms, Wilson filmed one colleague’s exposed legs and manipulated the camera to record up her skirt in between her legs while continuing a conversation with her.
Wilson was censured by the tribunal in 2019 and suspended for one year. Conditions were imposed on his practice and he was ordered to pay $4200 in costs.
Over a period of six years, Dr A prescribed prescription medicines including tramadol hydrochloride, zopiclone, codeine phosphate, citalopram hydrobromide, lorazepam, mirtazapine, and triazolam for her own use.
As well as this, she was accused of misleading or attempting to mislead her employer, the Medical Council and a pharmacist.
While Dr A agreed to most of the charge, she denied the allegations related to misleading or attempting to mislead the pharmacist.
This was the only aspect of the charge the tribunal found was not established.
The doctor was censured, directed to pay $35,000 and had conditions placed on her practising certificate.
The tribunal found Dr Y failed to maintain a controlled drug register of morphine administered to his patient, failed to keep clear and accurate patient notes adequately and failed to communicate with members of the community palliative care team adequately.
He also adopted a “when necessary” administration of morphine, which the tribunal found to be negligent.
The decision concerned the care of a patient who had terminal cancer.
Several other charge particulars, including allegations that he administered inappropriate doses of morphine, were not established by the tribunal.
He was censured, ordered to pay $15,000 and granted name suppression.
Throughout his career, Dr Tony Hanne developed a special interest in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and centred his practice around its assessment and treatment.
The GP wrote thousands of prescriptions for ADHD medication and would regularly receive referrals from other doctors due to his expertise in the area.
This work, however, goes against rules in Aotearoa banning GPs from prescribing methylphenidate (Ritalin) and dexamphetamine without approval from a specialist paediatrician or psychiatrist.
Hanne worked with a psychiatrist who did not see or speak with the patients but still approved the prescriptions.
A 2022 Tribunal found Hanne guilty of professional misconduct for prescribing the medications more than 5400 times without properly consulting a psychiatrist first and submitting false and misleading claims to Pharmac for subsidies of the drugs on 214 occasions.
The drug subsidies he claimed required him to have approval from a psychiatrist to prescribe them, and because he didn’t, he misled Pharmac.
In April this year Hanne, now in his 80s, was censured, suspended for one year, had conditions imposed on his return to practice and was ordered to pay more than $175,000 in costs and a fine.
The tribunal’s website said Hanne has appealed to the High Court against the tribunal’s penalty decision in particular, the orders for suspension and fine.
Katie Harris is an Auckland-based journalist who covers social issues including sexual assault, workplace misconduct, crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2020.
The 19-year-old disappeared without her wallet or mobile phone.