Penalties confirmed for GP who had relationship with patient

A Dunedin doctor’s registration has been cancelled after he slept with a patient 33 years younger than him.

Paul Charles Bennett, who previously owned Broadway Medical Centre in Dunedin, was a general practitioner from 1980 until his retirement in May 2019.

In November 2018, a complaint was laid with the Medical Council of New Zealand about Bennett. He initially denied having sex with a patient, but recanted in a letter sent to the council four months later.

The case was heard before the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal on February 15 and 16 last year, after a charge was laid by a professional conduct committee against Bennett.

Bennett was accused of having a sexual relationship with a patient who had recently been a patient of his, and making misleading statements to the medical council about that relationship.

Bennett, who later admitted the charge, had been the patient’s doctor for eight years, and her children’s doctor.

The doctor and patient had a shared mutual interest, and Bennett paid her cash to continue that activity – the details of which were suppressed by the High Court – when he went on a sixweek holiday.

A month before their relationship became sexual, Bennett transferred the patient to another doctor at the centre.

However, he saw her five more times as a patient before the other doctor was first mentioned as her clinician, and he continued to write prescriptions for her while staying on as her children’s GP.

Bennett saw her nine times in total after she was transferred to another doctor, and provided repeated prescriptions over the course of their relationship.

After their sexual relationship stopped, they continued to communicate.

The tribunal found Bennett breached the standards regarding doctor-patient relationships. It also found there was an ‘‘ongoing intimate and inappropriate relationship’’ regardless of when a sexual relationship began.

‘‘It is wrong for a doctor to enter into a relationship with a former patient, or a close relative of the patient, if this breaches the trust the patient placed in the doctor,’’ the tribunal said.

It also found Bennett misled the Medical Council about the relationship. The tribunal censured Bennett and ordered his registration be cancelled.

Bennett appealed the penalty and several non-publication orders to the High Court.

The court dismissed those aspects of the appeal and declined suppression.