Survey : Female doctors 'better behaved' than males

Male doctors are four times more likely to be disciplined for misconduct than their female counterparts, researchers in Melbourne, Australia, have found.

The most common reason for the discipline was sexual misconduct, accounting for 24 per cent of all cases.

Unethical or illegal prescribing accounted for 21 per cent of misconduct cases while eight per cent involved death and nine per cent involved physical harm to the patient.

Katie Elkin and fellow researchers from the University of Melbourne analysed 485 cases where doctors were found guilty of misconduct and disciplined by tribunals in Australia and New Zealand between 2000 and 2009.

Male doctors were involved in 91 per cent of the one in 1,500 cases of indiscipline

They found that about one in every 1500 doctors is disciplined in Australia each year for misconduct.

Male doctors were involved in 91 per cent of the cases.

After the figures were adjusted to account for the underlying gender mix of all doctors and the fewer hours worked on average by female doctors, they indicated that male doctors were disciplined more than four times the rate of female doctors.

Researchers found that obstetrician-gynaecologists and psychiatrists were the biggest culprits, with the highest rate of disciplinary action, followed by general practitioners.

The study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, indicated that in the majority of cases, patients did not suffer physical or diagnosed psychiatric harm.

Source: AAP