Australian Doctor

14/11/2025

AHPRA and other health watchdogs fielded 22,658 complaints last financial year, more than half of them about doctors.

Despite the record numbers of complaints, 81.1% of complaints finalised took less than six months, AHPRA said.

14/11/2025

Dr Patrick Hart says he has lost hope of ever working as a GP again after serving four months in prison and receiving a 10-month suspension from practice.

Dr Patrick Hart was imprisoned after smashing 16 petrol pumps with a hammer.

13/11/2025

In a world of budgets, precision medication and machines that go ping, medicine’s issues can still come down to the willingness of doctors to talk to each other.

An example in point comes from Brisbane’s Prince Charles Hospital.

An 'extremely concerning' benchmarking report on a hospital’s heart and lung transplant services reveals that issues can still come down to personalities.

13/11/2025

Last month, a landmark analysis by the GP college presidents revealed the list of medical schools most likely to generate future GPs.

AusDoc has now surveyed 300 of its readers on their medical school experiences and whether a future life as a GP was encouraged or not.

'My student case presentation was denounced by the head of rheumatology as ‘no better than a GP’s',' one doctor recalled.

13/11/2025

Following an application by the RACGP, a TGA committee is about to decide whether to expand prescribing rights for isotretinoin to GPs with additional training.

12/11/2025

Recent large-scale research has put the spotlight on a nuance that often looms under the surface of antidepressant prescribing: not all antidepressants are physiologically equal.

Weight effects, systolic blood pressure and heart rate vary markedly, while some drugs increase total cholesterol.

12/11/2025

A year ago, Dr Anna Carswell moved from Goondiwindi in Queensland to Launceston in Tasmania to raise her family, encouraged by the Tasmanian Government’s promises of opportunities for rural generalists to deliver intrapartum care.

Now, she cannot even get onto a birthing suite.

Meet the doctors who regularly fly interstate just to maintain their skills.

12/11/2025

A landmark study backs the benefits of regular PSA screening amid declining rates of prostate cancer overtreatment attributable to improved diagnostics, a leading Australian urologist says.

The European Randomised Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer found that cancer mortality was 13% lower in those who underwent PSA testing.

11/11/2025

A prison doctor says in retrospect, she would have intervened when guards placed a disabled inmate in an at-risk cell after he had an epileptic seizure rather than taking him to the medical centre.

Wayne Hunt died in hospital a few days after his seizure at Darwin Correctional Centre.

11/11/2025

The Nobel Committee has quietly revised its scientific background paper for this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine after a leading Australian immunologist accused it of misrepresenting scientific history.

Professor Bruce Hall accuses it of misrepresenting scientific history.

11/11/2025

A bill to let faith-based aged care homes refuse to participate in voluntary assisted dying would force terminally ill patients seeking the procedure to transfer to other facilities, doctors say.

Susan Carter, who introduced the bill, argues that onsite VAD distresses other aged care residents.

10/11/2025

A man died of post-surgical complications after he was wrongly diagnosed with lung squamous cell carcinoma based on a contaminated biopsy sample, a coroner has found.

Dennis Jackson died of pneumonia after undergoing a 'misconceived' thoracotomy of the upper lobe of his left lung.