Doctor found guilty of misconduct

Press, 7 June 1982, Page 2

Doctor found guilty of misconduct

PA Wellington A New Plymouth doctor who took court action to try to stop a girl, aged 15, from getting an abortion, has been found guilty by the Medical Practitioners Disciplinary Committee of professional misconduct. Dr Melvyn Lee Maxwell Wall has been censured and ordered to pay costs of $1506 by the committee in its judgment on a complaint laid by the Women’s National Abortion Action Campaign.

The decision of the committee, which held its inquiry on May 12, was made public on Saturday by Wonaac. In its ruling the committee said that Dr Wall had contravened the ethical code of the medical profession by breaching the confidence of his patient without consent.

The committee said that although the patient transferred the care of her pregnancy to another doctor. Dr Wall decided that he was the medical advisor of the unborn child and apparently of the juvenile also. “He sought in the High Court to appeal against or quash the certifying consultant's decision to terminate the pregnancy but. in the process of making such challenge, filed in the Court an affidavit, exhibited other documents, which disclosed wide-ranging details not only of the patient and her pregnancy, but also of other members of her family. Such

details usually are strictly confidential," the committee said. ' "No consent to disclose these medical confidences was sought by Dr Wall from his immediate patient, who was a minor, nor from her parents, nor from the super-intendent-in-chief of the Taranaki Base Hospital. “Whatever Dr Wall's personal convictions may have been which led him to take the legal action against the other doctors, he was bound by the ethical code of the medical profession not to breach the confidence of his patient without consent. In making the disclosures that he did he was in contravention of the ethical code and the degree of detail supplied by him in his affidavit and annexures was excessive.

"Dr Wall did not appear from the affidavits to have drawn to the attention of the Court the need of confidentiality in that the extent of his revelation of matters outside the relevant details which might be said to be necessary to this case, indicated his lack of concern for and oversight of the ethical principle involved. “It is our view that proceedings could still have been taken, had he wished, without the disclosure in such detail as happened." The committee comprised Dr D. L. Richwhite (chairman), Sir Randal Elliott, and Sir Leonard Thorton.