Australian Doctor 20th June 2025

20 JUNE 2025
The country’ s leading independent medical publication
Stay up to date with the latest at ausdoc. com. au
TWO IN THIS ISSUE
Ischaemic heart disease in women
HOW TO TREAT, PAGE 25
The life and deaths of health workers in Gaza
NEWS REVIEW, PAGE 46
Le collège des chirurgiens ne regrette rien?
ANALYSIS, PAGE 7
Bisphosphonate‘ treatment breaks’
THERAPY UPDATE, PAGE 42

GP cleared over love affair

The medical board investigation ran for three years.
Heather Saxena A GP in a small town accused of misconduct
for starting a relationship with a patient a few weeks after their therapeutic relationship ended has been cleared.
The Medical Board of Australia spent three years investigating the
relationship. By the time of the tribunal hearing in April this year, the pair had had a child together.
The tribunal heard that the GP, whose name was suppressed, had met the patient in 2019 while working in a town of 2300 people,“ where everyone knows everyone or knows of everyone”.
The medical board alleged the patient was vulnerable because of their 20-year age difference and because she had chronic pain.
Additionally, the relationship had begun“ very shortly” after their final consultation.
The tribunal was told the GP had treated the patient eight times between 2019 and 2020, including for a URTI, dysmenorrhoea and pain following a laparoscopy, prescribing short-term oxycodone and tramadol. The patient, aged 22 when they met, said she had booked with
whoever was available and that the consultations were“ insignificant”.
“ She recalled during appointments the practitioner being professional,
‘ The patient did not once feel intimidated.’
she did not once feel intimidated or uncomfortable, there was no flirtatious exchange between them and she did not feel any sense of emotional or
other dependence on the practitioner,” the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal said.
About a week after her last appointment— a phone consult regarding pathology results and iron supplement scripts— the pair had become Facebook friends when the patient thanked the GP for lending a kayak to mutual acquaintances.
From there, they had exchanged several messages.
“ The tribunal has read PAGE 4

‘ There are some very nasty ways to die’

Emeritus Professor Roger Byard with his dog, Minnie.
Ciara Seccombe FORTY years ago, Emeritus Professor Roger Byard was working as a hospital pathology registrar with an interest in forensics when he was tasked with performing his first autopsy.
It meant he had to go to the patient and tell him he was going to die.
“ He was an old digger,” Professor Byard tells Australian Doctor.
“ He took it all in, and then he said,‘ So who is going to do this autopsy?’
“ I just looked at him and told him,‘ It is going to be me, actually.’
“ He sat back on his pillow and was quiet for about three minutes, and then he just looked over at me and said,‘ Son, you are going to be alright.’”
Professor Byard took the man’ s word as a blessing on his future career, and it proved to be precisely that— today Professor Byard is one of Australia’ s most eminent forensic pathologists.
He originally trained as a GP in Canada in 1982 after working as a flying doctor in 1981, with stints in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.
The idea was to eventually enrol in an emergency medicine course in Canada, but he says he got sidetracked snorkelling in Belize on his way over from Australia.
“ By the time I arrived, the only spots left were in pathology. It was not something I had intended to do,” he says.
“ But I started in basic general pathology, then got into paediatric and then forensic, and found out it is the most fascinating part of medicine.”
Newly qualified, during his first week on call, he was asked by police to go to a small
‘ With the Snowtown case, I had nightmares for three or four nights.’
town 140km north of Adelaide to examine the contents of barrels stored in an abandoned bank vault. It was May 1999.
Inside them were eight victims of serial killer John Bunting and his associates.
“ Dealing with the Snowtown murders was bizarre. I think my colleague and I emptied the barrels on Friday, and then— I think it was about 3am on Saturday— I just sat bolt upright in bed, wide awake, thinking,‘ What on earth was that?’”
PAGE 5