A doctor has been disqualified after admitting to overprescribing medicines to his addicted wife, as well as using drugs himself.
The doctor, who cannot be named, has been disqualified from practising medicine for 18 months by the Medical Board of Australia.
The board found the doctor engaged in professional misconduct between 2014 and 2019, including inappropriately prescribing schedule 4 medications to a person he had a close personal relationship with.
Findings against the doctor also include prescribing excessive amounts, taking medications he had prescribed to someone else and failing to refer his wife for assessment and treatment for addiction.
The Medical Board was first notified of the doctor's conduct by another practitioner following his wife's admission to hospital for an alleged overdose.
The doctor, only referred to as RRB, made early admissions and co-operated with investigations by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.
He also retired from the medical profession and surrendered his registration in October 2019.
RRB's conduct continued over an extended period, involved the regular prescription of large quantities of benzodiazepines and opioids.
In one example RRB prescribed his wife, who suffered chronic back pain, a total of 300 tablets of insomnia drug temazepam over a three-month period - when the recommended dose was one tablet a night.
He also prescribed 100 tablets of temazepam just 10 days after his wife's treating doctor had prescribed the same quantity of the same drug.
The doctor himself also took the drugs he had prescribed for his wife.
In handing down its findings last week, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal noted it was "unfortunate" that RRB ended his lengthy medical career in this way.
Board members noted the context of an onerous and complex relationship between the husband and wife, and that RRB had made a well-intentioned but regrettable effort to support and care for his wife which was driven by compassion.
"It should serve as a salutary reminder to the medical profession as to the inherent dangers of treating family members, absent emergency, more so where (as in this case) that treatment includes the prescribing of drugs of dependence," the board said.
"Despite the compassion that RRB claims to have felt for (his wife), he must have known that he was placing her at serious risk in prescribing at those levels.
"It is extraordinary that he continued to prescribe S4 medications to (his wife) even after her August 2019 hospital admission."
