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News Review
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Dr Lei Min Chen and his quest for redemption
Rachel Carter Chief of staff at Australian Doctor .
A doctor ’ s struggle to work again after deregistration .
“
You feel like a dead man walking in the street .
“ You have a career , you have a job and then , suddenly , you are worthless .”
Dr Lei Min Chen comes across as positive and hopeful , but there are still moments , as he talks to Australian Doctor , where the pain of what he has been through surfaces .
It has been more than five years since he was expunged from the medical register for his entanglements in a series of clinics offering treatment for severe depression .
His story is not exceptional , but the fate of what happens to doctors who fall foul of the regulatory regime and find themselves excommunicated from the profession often remains hidden .
Maybe it is a sense of shame . It is not something to talk about .
But the subsequent journey for those subject to a very public and confronting judgement is invariably stark .
The clinic Dr Chen joined was based in Sydney and run by the Aura Medical Corporation *.
The company emerged in 2014 with around half a dozen doctors prescribing and administering ketamine injections as off-label treatments .
Clinical respectability came from its clinical director Dr Graham Barrett , a GP who at the time was also an associate professor at the University of Melbourne .
But the treatment protocols he devised were advertised direct to patients via TV and radio adverts . There was no referral mechanism in place .
Sons and Daughters soap star Rowena Wallace fronted some of the commercials , where patients were encouraged to ring 1800 numbers .
Australian Doctor first reported what was happening — the central accusation being that vulnerable people searching desperately for a resolution to the ills that afflicted them were being asked to part with thousands of dollars for little more than experimental therapy .
Fuelling the concerns was that these clinics had links to Jacov ‘ Jack ’ Vaisman and his Advanced Medical Institute empire which had recently been through the regulatory mincemeat machine for the way it was flogging high cost , unproven treatments for erectile dysfunction .
After the mainstream media started taking an interest , Dr Barrett resigned as medical director .
Within six months the Aura clinics were shut down . The bad publicity was blamed . At this point Dr Chen moved on to a new job at Sydney ’ s North Shore Private Hospital .
The notification
As many doctors would expect , it was not long before he was notified of a complaint against him .
He had failed to properly assess patients he saw , it was alleged , he had failed to exercise responsible medical judgement , and he had failed to inform the patients ’ own GPs about what he was doing .
In 2015 , Dr Chen went before the Medical Council of NSW , fronting a series of hearings to defend himself .
The council ’ s panel was not impressed .
Accepting the highly critical expert witness testimony of Dr Harry
Nespolon , later to become RACGP president , Dr Chen was found guilty of professional misconduct .
But before sanctions were imposed , Dr Chen agreed to be interviewed by Australian Doctor .
He admitted mistakes , expressed regrets but tried to explain why he had become involved : “ It was exciting to me . It was a new and novel treatment .
‘ I made it clear to the tribunal that I looked after those depressed patients with my heart and soul .’
“ I was aware of some of the research [ around ketamine ] going on in the US , as well as here in Australia , and the belief was that ketamine could be a revolutionary new treatment for severe depression .”
He also said he was not doing it for the money — the pay was $ 870 a day and there were no commissions for writing scripts .
“ I made it clear to the tribunal that I looked after those depressed patients with my heart and soul .”
But as the only Aura doctor to go before a public tribunal , he said had been made a scapegoat .
And that seems to have been the trigger word for the tribunal .
When it reconvened to impose sanctions , it was scathing .
Referring to the article , it said
Dr Chen had displayed a “ rigidity of thinking ”, defensiveness and unwillingness to acknowledge the “ deficits ” in his care .
It banned him for two years .
At the time he was working as a GP registrar at the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress — an Aboriginal primary healthcare service in Alice Springs .
He had won a place on the GP training program just weeks before the conditions were first placed on his registration .
“ I was doing very well ; I was just about to finish to do the GP exam ,” he tells Australian Doctor .
“ The decision to immediately suspend me came as a surprise to my life .
Dr Lei Min Chen .
“ How could I be performing very well in Alice Springs and then be suspended immediately ?
“ How could I be treated this way ? It didn ’ t make any sense to me .”
A graduate of Beijing Medical University and the University of Queensland , who had hoped to make it as an orthopaedic surgeon , Dr Chen returned to Alice Springs to pick up his belongings , his car , and say goodbye to his friends . It was the end . He decided to go home to his family in NSW .
A dark place
He spent some time bushwalking in
Kamay Botany Bay National Park . Emotionally he was in a dark place . “ I realised why some people can snap and kill themselves because doctors [ in these situations ] are under pressure and they go from a very high status , respected , down to nothing .
“ You walk into the national park , you walk to a cliff , you think about why you have been treated this way . But I ’ m not the kind of person to harm myself .” He says he spent most of the rest