Wolf Gabrielle
Senior Lecturer, School of Law, Faculty of Business and Law, Deakin University.
J Law Med. 2018 Feb;25(2):331-356.
Doctors Francis Timothy Hartnett, Zygmunt Epstein and Izso Hartmayer Van der Hope were the first medical practitioners to appeal against decisions of the Medical Board of Victoria (Board) to cancel doctors' registration to practise medicine after finding that they had engaged in infamous conduct in a professional respect. This article analyses the Board's decisions in the 1940s regarding these three doctors and their appeals. The article argues that the doctors were unconventional and the Board's members, whose own career successes were built on their adherence to custom, allowed their aversion to the doctors' nonconformity to compromise their impartial assessment of their behaviour. The Board had only the finding of infamous conduct and the sanction of deregistration with which to respond to doctors; conduct that fell below professional standards, but in these three cases, cancellation of the doctors' registration to practise medicine was unduly severe and disproportionate to the gravity of their behaviour. This investigation illustrates the importance of the passage of legislation - after these cases were heard - empowering the Board to impose more lenient sanctions than deregistration for doctors' unprofessional conduct. It also highlights that regulators of the medical profession must still ensure that any antipathy they may feel towards doctors for their unconventionality does not influence their assessment of a fitting response to their conduct.
弗朗西斯·蒂莫西·哈特内特医生、齐格蒙特·爱泼斯坦医生和伊佐·哈特迈耶·范德霍普医生是首批对维多利亚州医学委员会（委员会）的决定提出上诉的执业医生。委员会认定他们在职业方面有不光彩行为后，取消了他们行医的注册资格。本文分析了20世纪40年代委员会对这三位医生的决定及其上诉情况。文章认为，这些医生行为 unconventional，而委员会成员自身的职业成功建立在对惯例的遵循之上，他们对医生不符合常规的厌恶影响了对其行为的公正评估。委员会仅有对不光彩行为的认定以及取消注册资格的处罚来应对医生；这种行为低于专业标准，但在这三个案例中，取消医生行医的注册资格过于严厉，与他们行为的严重程度不相称。此次调查说明了在这些案件审理之后通过立法的重要性，该立法赋予委员会对医生的不专业行为施加比取消注册资格更宽松处罚的权力。它还强调，医学行业的监管机构仍必须确保，他们可能因医生不符合常规而产生的任何反感不会影响对其行为适当回应的评估。
