Thank you for the support.

Please keep sharing this petition to all those who may be concerned.

We have listened to your feedback and will strive to improve the message of our petition. 

To make it easier for readers to follow, we have refined our petition and will provide important information in stages. Below is the section we decided to move from the main petition page to this update.

Important events demonstrating failure of AHPRA and the Medical Board in stopping bullying culture:

In 2015, Health Professionals Australia Reform Association (HPARA) was formed to address AHPRA’s dysfunctional handling of complaints and seeking reform in the wake of doctor suicides from bullying. HPARA initiated a petition which inspired the Australian Senate to commission an inquiry into the conduct of AHPRA and the Medical Board in December 2016.

Following the Senate inquiry, evidence emerged that AHPRA and the Medical Board have failed in its duty to address and curb rising vexatious complaints as a means to bullying.

The Senate report stated:

‘… [the Senate] found that the [AHPRA] complaints process can sometimes be used by health practitioners for bullying or harassment.  

Similarly, most of the submissions to this inquiry from health practitioners, or groups aligned with health practitioners, considered vexatious, or baseless, notifications to be a significant issue for the complaints process…[and] when vexatious notifications are not identified early in the complaints process, health practitioners can be subjected to unmerited adverse consequences including reputational damage; misrepresentation in media reporting; significant levels of stress; and risks the loss of the practitioner's employment.’

Queensland orthopaedic surgeon Dr Michael Mansfield, FRACS told the Senate committee that

‘AHPRA, via its allowed misuse of mandatory reporting guidelines, is facilitating bullying on a level never before seen…This is because the investigators lack any medical expertise. They do not have the necessary perspective to judge serious vs vexatious claims.’

Dr Don Kane, FRACP (retired), the first Chair of HPARA (sub 114) wrote:

'Health professionals who have been fortunate to not be victims of the inappropriate actions of the medical complaints process in Australia and do not raise concerns are either unaware of what has been occurring, believe it will not happen to them or fear that they will suffer reprisals if they too raise concerns.

The misuse of the notification process and subsequent actions by AHPRA are major issues particularly because there is repetition of these in so many cases. Complaints are frequently lodged under the guise of mandatory notification i.e. in the public interest, when they patently are not. AHPRA does not investigate the complaints thoroughly before placing conditions on the registration of the subject of the complaint.

The genesis for complaints are not clinical issues in many cases but for personal and commercial reasons. AHPRA is being misused by complainants.'

Dr Joanna Flynn, the Chair of the Medical Board, responded in her December 2016 message, acknowledging this problem and said:

‘Bullying and harassment are serious problems in the medical profession and have a direct impact on patient safety. The Board and AHPRA want to play our part in building a future in which bullying and harassment have no place.’

In April 2018, the Medical Board announced the findings of an AHPRA-commissioned research that ‘truly vexatious complaints are very rare…less than one percent, but they have a big effect on everyone involved’

In essence, the Medical Board is downplaying the prevalence of this form of medical bullying, rather than working on cracking down on vexatious complaints.

Even if the incidence of vexatious complaints is less than one percent, surely there should be at least ten such cases identified and published by the Medical Board. But as far as we know, no such cases had ever been reported by AHPRA.

To make matter worse for doctors, the Medical Board decided in February 2018 to link published court and tribunal decisions on the public AHPRA register of implicated doctors even when there had been no adverse finding against the doctors. Dr Flynn, Chair of the Medical Board, defended such insensitive, unjust and unethical policy, in the name of transparency and public safety.

We see this conduct as a subtle form of complementing medical bullying and vexatious complaints. Bluntly speaking, this is reminiscent of olden days’ witch-hunt.

This Medical Board policy resulted in a massive public outcry led by Dr Steel Scott’s petition and echoed by the AMA and medical defence organisations (MDOs).

In July 2018, Dr Flynn finally backed down and reversed such policy without making any apology or acknowledgement on how such policy had contributed to the immense stress doctors faced in the midst of our entrenched medical bullying culture.

This appears to be a serious lapse of judgement from the Chair of the Medical Board, far beyond that expected of a practitioner with her experience and expertise.

Importantly, Dr Scott’s petition demonstrated that over 16,600 people who signed up in support voiced their concerns about this kind of medical bullying and shared their own experience as victims of this form of bullying.

We do not believe AHPRA’s claim that ‘vexatious complaints are very rare’ is correct.

There is good evidence linking investigation process by regulatory bodies and doctor suicide.

To date, AHPRA has not effectively implemented many of the Senate recommendations on identifying and dealing with vexatious complaints, and many doctors are still suffering under AHPRA investigative process.

We urge our Ministers of Health, from both the Commonwealth and all eight State and Territory governments, to heed our call for urgent reform into the operation of AHPRA and the Medical Board.

Please support our petition to save our doctors.