KEY POINTS:
A small-town GP has been investigated by health authorities for having an affair with a patient nearly 20 years ago - allegedly clouding his judgment to the point that he was slow to diagnose a simple kidney disease in his lover's daughter.
The woman's ex-husband laid a complaint
with the Health and Disability Commissioner last year; the commissioner has found there are grounds to take disciplinary action.
To make matters worse, the doctor called his former lover after the investigation had begun and urged her not to co-operate and make any medical records "go missing".
If the director of proceedings decides to take the matter further, the doctor could face a disciplinary tribunal and be struck from the medical register.
The allegation is the latest in a string against doctors and other health practitioners, who are forbidden to start relationships with patients.
A fulltime mother in a small rural town, the woman mixed in the same social circles as her doctor - who also treated her husband and three children for five years before the affair and during the 18-month relationship.
"We shared a love of music. I knew his wife through the local book club, and we also trained for a half marathon together," the woman said.
"He and I were aware of our attraction to each other. I was so lonely and unhappy in my marriage, and I believe that he was in a similar situation with his marriage."
She described the affair as "desperately intense", as the couple, who both had young families, could not spend much time together and would meet to have sex at the surgery.
The cheating wife said she felt guilty about the affair and had suggested he should not be her doctor any more, but that he had assured her it was OK.
In the HDC investigation, she was concerned that her relationship with the doctor had affected his clinical judgment, as he had been slow to diagnose her daughter's condition.
"I don't think he picked up stuff that was happening with my daughter's kidney problem because he was too in love with me. A simple urine test would have picked up that she had, you know, major problems with her kidneys."
Soon after the affair became public in the small town at the end of 1988, the doctor split with his wife and the family moved to a nearby city.
The woman's husband was devastated to learn that his wife had been having an affair with his doctor.
"The shock of the whole thing is that he's our family doctor. Hell, he delivered my child, he gave me my vasectomy.
"When you find out it's not sort of the local butcher, milkman or whatever, that it's the actual doctor, that sort of compounds the whole thing."
Health and Disability Commissioner Ron Paterson said there was unequivocal evidence that the woman was the doctor's patient, despite medical records going "missing".
He was also satisfied that the doctor and the woman had had a sexual relationship from mid-1987 until December 1988, although the doctor refused to co-operate with the probe.
"Any sexual relationship between a patient and her doctor involves a breach of trust. A doctor is required to have the patient's best interests at heart. That is the fundamental contract which allows patients to trust the doctor with intimate physical and psychological matters," Paterson said.
To make matters worse, the doctor had called the woman and encouraged her not to co-operate and had suggested that any medical records "could perhaps go missing".
