Six-year disqualification following a finding of professional misconduct

09 Aug 2024

A Victorian tribunal has disqualified a former medical practitioner from re-registering until March 2029, following a finding of professional misconduct related to prescribing of Schedule 8 medications, involving 14 patients over five years.

Between 2014 and 2019, the Medical Board of Australia (the Board) received ten notifications about Dr Jon Currie, a neurologist and addiction medicine specialist. In January 2019, the Board imposed conditions on Dr Currie’s registration, where he was not allowed to prescribe, supply or administer Schedule 8 medicines or any drug of dependence. In December of that year, the Board referred Dr Currie to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (the tribunal) and again in December 2020, with additional allegations against him.

The tribunal consolidated the two proceedings into one, concerning 18 allegations regarding Dr Currie’s conduct with respect to 14 patients, and heard the matter in 2023. Eleven were prescribing allegations concerning how Dr Currie had been treating patients between May 2013 and March 2019, and seven permit allegations concerning his prescribing Schedule 8 medicines without a permit and prescribing Schedule 8 medicines for longer than eight weeks without a permit.

The conditions on Dr Currie’s registration were still in place in March 2023, when he told the Board and tribunal that he was retiring and surrendering his registration. This was just before his tribunal hearing, which went ahead anyway.

At the hearing, the Board submitted that Dr Currie’s prescribing was not supported by robust evidence and he had put patients at serious risk of harm. The Board’s position was that because Dr Currie defended his clinical decision-making, he showed no insight into how his experimental treatment approach was inappropriate, and that in the interests of public safety, other practitioners whose prescribing practices were similar should be deterred.

The Board’s expert witness stated that in their opinion, Dr Currie’s conduct represented ‘a reckless pattern of prescribing behaviour inconsistent with medical standards and community expectations in Australia.’

The tribunal found that to the extent that 17 of the 18 allegations were proven, Dr Currie’s behaviour was professional misconduct because it was a substantial departure from the standards reasonably expected by a registered health practitioner of an equivalent level of training and experience. Overall, the Tribunal found that the behaviour was conduct that was inconsistent with Dr Currie being a fit and proper person to hold registration in the profession. It reprimanded Dr Currie and disqualified him from applying for re-registration for six years, until March 2029.

Read the tribunal’s full decision on AustLii.