Australian Doctor

Victoria Police have dropped an investigation into Dr Simon Gordon, the former gynaecologist accused of performing unnecessary endometriosis procedures on female patients. Dr Gordon came to the attention of regulators in February following a Four Corners investigation that alleged multiple women had made complaints to Epworth HealthCare hospitals, where the surgeries took place, and to AHPRA. Dr Gordon, who has denied the allegations, was referred to police by then-Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan.

A new heart failure treatment effect calculator will help doctors overcome concerns about prescribing life-saving medications, according to Aussie researchers. The first of its kind, the calculator has been launched by George Institute for Global Health having been modelled from almost 40,000 participants across nine major heart failure trials. In Australia, around 150,000 people live with heart failure, and it accounts for almost one in 50 deaths.

In a new series from AusDoc, we are chatting to primary care nurses from across Australia. In 2021, when the GP who owned the practice where Haley Hodgson worked retired, she made the unusual decision to buy it from him. Here, she shares what she learnt from the experience. Name: Haley Hodgson If this is your first visit to the new AusDoc website, reset your password here. Having trouble logging in? Back to sign in You're missing out on this article. Join for free, in only 30 seconds.

The RACGP has defended its new environmental accreditation standards, saying that making practices “climate resilient” is about patient safety, not swamping practices with unnecessary red tape. The standards, published two weeks ago, suggest that practices embrace measures ranging from using recycled products and carbon offsets to reducing paper wastage and lobbying local governments for electric vehicle charging stations.

Women with a history of gestational diabetes mellitus who go on to develop type 2 diabetes are diagnosed almost 13 years earlier on average and are more than six times as likely to be diagnosed before age 40, new research suggests. The unpublished Danish study found that 40% of women with previous gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) were under age 40 at type 2 diabetes (T2D) onset compared with 6% of women without previous GDM.

Lawyers are seeking guidance from the Medical Board of Australia, amid growing uncertainty about the medicolegal risks faced by doctors signing partnership agreements with RNs allowing them to prescribe. Formal written agreements with doctors or nurse practitioners are a mandatory part of the RN prescribing model and are meant to document when an RN can initiate and cease medications, along with the conditions and indications for which they can prescribe.

We are told that the inability to stand on one leg for 30 seconds without tumbling is a sign of impending old age. I’m sure this is true. I’ve seen more than one patient suffer a fractured neck of femur or some other calamity as a consequence of falling while dressing. It’s not the only sign of advancing age. I wish to propose that the inability to get out of a car in under four minutes is an equally reliable predictor of impending problems.

An independent evaluation of the Federal Government’s $3.2 billion urgent care clinics needs to measure their value against the urgent care being provided by after-hours and regular GP practices, the AMA says. The Australian National Audit Office began looking at the rollout of the program back in March.

A six-year-old died from complications linked to scurvy after doctors had advised his parents to give him a multivitamin — only for it to later emerge that the alleged multivitamin they used contained no vitamin C. Connor Dean, who had trisomy 21, had developed increasingly restricted eating from around the age of five, with his diet eventually consisting mainly of white bread, sausage, chocolate and custard.

Countless studies on AI in medicine have appeared in recent years and, in the words of a recent JAMA perspective, a prevailing view has emerged: AI will play a supporting role for doctors. It is meant to provide comfort that the profession’s obsolescence is not imminent. But Dr Ezekiel Emanuel says this is deluded.