Dear members of MyAHPRA,
My name is Dr. Gerrit Reimers and 21 years ago, I was a newly qualified anaesthetist suffering from impairment (addiction to opiates). The impairment had been brought on by a prolonged period of bullying during my training. It is well recognised that bullying has drastic consequences for the patients and doctors alike. Some doctors turn to suicide so I was, in some ways, more fortunate. Things became much more serious when a patient arrested post-operatively in 2000. I did all I could to save the patient. Notwithstanding the fact that I had broken no conditions on my registration and indeed, had had no conditions on my registration, I was suspended. The police charged me with manslaughter some months later. At the trial in 2001, the police played a straight bat and put on a balanced case including all relevant evidence from all relevant witnesses. I was acquitted after less than 3 hours of jury deliberation.
I recovered from my impairment and have never, to this day, relapsed. Nevertheless, I remained suspended while, for 3 years, the HCCC investigated every single anaesthetic I had ever given and found no other deficiencies of patient care. Actually, that’s not quite correct, they alleged that I’d forgotten to complete an anaesthetic chart in 1999 (nurses in recovery reminded me) and, in 1996, I was the registrar helping a senior anaesthetist who didn’t pass a central line. According to the HCCC, that was my fault. Obviously, the Medical Council and the HCCC were not satisfied that justice had been done and so they took me to the Medical Tribunal on a charge of impairment particularised by various conduct consistent with impairment. They weren’t, however, about to make the same mistake as the police and so they were very careful with witness selection. They called only one nurse (not any of the nurses that had worked with me on the arrest but one who was in the room at the time doing other things). To bolster their case they relied on no less than 4 experts who separately and not in conclave gave commentary on the single nurse’s evidence; the same evidence was given 5 times thus reinforcing it in the tribunal’s mind—an old barrister’s trick. I did not deny the particulars but I did deny that I was, at the time of the hearing, impaired. The tribunal found that I had deficiencies of character and skill so great I would never be fit to practice and struck me off for 10 years, the longest period ever. To say that I was blindsided would be an understatement. The question of character did not arise at the hearing nor was it the subject of any of the complaints. The tribunal was required to afford natural justice (a fair hearing by an unbiased tribunal) and needed to notify me of the nature of the case against me. Plainly, it did not. Had there been a hearing on the question of character, I would have submitted evidence that impairment explained the conduct and I would have kept my registration. I know this to be true because, when I appeared before another tribunal in 2018, precisely that evidence was given (by a conclave of 3 experts) and accepted. My character was never the issue.
I could have appealed but I was badly advised by UMP (now Avant) and another lawyer who both said the 2003 decision was correct. Avant gave no reason for their advice but the other lawyer said “The tribunal found you have a bad character, how can you even think of appealing?” One would have thought that such a basic error would have been obvious to a lawyer. For a while, I gave up on my hopes and dreams of being a doctor and tried my hand at other things but found that, with the 2003 decision hanging over me, I was unemployable. Although my marriage had broken down, I still had young children to care for, so, in 2008, I sought interstate registration in the belief that the same errors would not be made again. The Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria opposed my registration. I appealed to a tribunal and the board (with the help of an expensive top-tier law firm) tried everything it could to stop me, including going to the media and taking me to the Supreme Court of Victoria on a jurisdictional issue (which I won). A year later, a tribunal in Victoria found that I had insight, remorse and contrition and had not used any drugs for over 10 years but was still unfit to practice because I had not accepted my 10 years ban. I began to smell a rat, so in 2011, I approached to Court of Appeal in NSW. The HCCC was the respondent and it held the 2003 decision out to be correct but did not rely on this because, I suspect, they knew they were on shaky ground; rather, they argued that I was too late to appeal. The Court of Appeal agreed I was out of time. In obiter the Court stated that negligence, if repeated often enough, could be found to amount to professional misconduct but that wasn’t relevant to the facts of my matter as there was no repeated negligence. The court didn’t mention my main ground of appeal which was that a finding adverse to character is inconsistent with a finding of impairment when based on the same evidence.
I applied to have my registration restored in 2018 and the proceedings were quite eventful. The Medical Council initially engaged a certain psychiatrist to prepare a report to assist the tribunal but, upon realising he had previously been favourable and was unlikely to change his opinion, it swapped him for another psychiatrist at the last minute. The new psychiatrist was a known zealot with fringe views. When the proceedings began, the Tribunal apologised to me that the second psychiatrist had lectured some Tribunal members the previous night and had expounded his extreme views to them. The Chairman asked if I wanted to proceed with this possible contamination and I said no, so my hearing dates were vacated and I had to wait 3 months for a new set of dates. Additionally, the Tribunal was concerned that the second psychiatrist’s opinion conflicted too violently with my psychiatrist’s opinion and so directed the Council to find a third psychiatrist and directed also that the three psychiatrists give their evidence in conclave.
Things weren’t going well for the Council so far, but they got worse—its barrister returned the brief. This is usually a very bad sign, creating, as it does, the inference that the barrister no longer enjoys the client’s confidence, a euphemism for the client not liking the advice they are given and sacking the barrister or alternatively the barrister quitting. The Council found a more compliant barrister for new hearing. This barrister was like a dog with a bone on the character issue—“Do you accept that you have a bad character?” was a question he asked, reworded and reformulated and asked again. I did not concede. I stated that my understanding of the 2003 decision was that the finding of character was in the context of impairment and I paraphrased the Council’s first psychiatrist, the favourable one, who said the character defects were ostensible and that impairment explained all of the conduct. This just so happened to be the view of the conclave as well, so I was on solid ground. In all, the question of character was agitated quite thoroughly, something that did not happen in 2003.
At the end of the evidence, the Tribunal asked the Council for draft conditions for its consideration. Surprisingly, the Council’s barrister told the Tribunal he didn’t have any and needed to seek instructions. He came back with a set of conditions that included up to two years of observing. The Tribunal accepted that impairment was the cause of the conduct and that I was no longer impaired and thus restored my name to the register but made it a condition that I observe for one full time year or 2 years part time—1600 hours in total. I suspect that this was to spite me. I was unable to find an observerhsip and it took me 2 more years to have this condition removed. Since being suspended in April of 2000 from my specialist practice, I was, as of October 2020, finally able to seek work as a resident.
I was taken aback by how fiercely the various boards and the HCCC defended the 2003 decision and by how much money they were prepared to throw away—quite possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars. They used every trick in the book. They went to the press to intimidate me, brought last minute appeals, ambushed me, made fraudulent but non falsifiable misrepresentations to superior courts and changed barristers and witnesses when it was in their interests to do so. I could go on but I think I’ve made my main points.
Even though I am now fully exonerated, I cannot find work, so tarnished is my reputation. I have lost my home, my family (my children were abducted to France and I could not afford to fight for their return), and am penniless without even enough superannuation to retire. In the last 20 years I have not earned more than $50,000 in any one year. As a result of the bullying that led to my impairment and the perfidy of the Medical Tribunal, Medical Council and HCCC, the income and life I should have enjoyed are now shattered dreams as I near the end of my working life.
What happened to me is extreme and unusual but it serves as a very unambiguous example of the lack of protection practitioners have against unfair and illegal administrative action and makes a very powerful case for the need for reform.
I also have some suggestions regarding proposals for reform. I would like to see sentencing guidelines for tribunals, fairer costs orders and permanent bans on tribunal members taking any form of remuneration from boards. I can explain in more detail if it’s of interest to MyAHPRA members.
Dr. Gerrit Reimers