Doctors and other healthcare practitioners who were found to have engaged in sexual misconduct by a tribunal over the past 16 years will have tribunal findings and decisions permanently added next to their names on the public register from 10 April.

“While this change may be distressing for some patients, practitioners, and others, it is an important step in giving people access to information that helps them make informed choices when seeking care and reinforces that breaches of trust will not be hidden,” a spokesperson for the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) told Medscape News Australia.

AHPRA does not currently have an exact figure of medical practitioners for whom sexual misconduct findings will be added to the public register, the spokesperson said.

In 2025, AHPRA received 1991 notifications about boundary violations, including sexual boundary violations, a 72% increase from the year before.

Tribunal decisions are already publicly available on state databases, but it is not easy to isolate information relating to sexual misconduct or individual healthcare practitioners.

‘A Decade in the Making’

In the past, active disciplinary sanctions have been added to the public register and been removed once the actions have ended, in some cases leaving the public unaware of a practitioner’s history of sexual misconduct.

The changes to the National Law, passed by the Queensland Parliament in 2025, also make it clear that nondisclosure agreements cannot stop people from raising concerns with AHPRA and that practitioners who have been cancelled or disqualified are required to apply for a reinstatement order before being reregistered.

The changes will apply to all states and territories except New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia, where the governments will take extra steps to enact these reforms.

The new legislation “has really been a decade in the making,” Marie Bismark, MD, psychiatrist and professor of law at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, told Medscape News Australia.

In an independent review published in 2017, law professor Ron Paterson recommended that AHPRA’s public register include links to published disciplinary decisions so that patients do not “have to resort to Dr Google” to find information about sexual misconduct.

In 2020, Bismark co-authored a study in the Medical Journal of Australia that found that 1167 healthcare practitioners had been the subject of sexual misconduct notifications over 5 years. This number represented 0.2% of the healthcare practitioners in Australia at that time.

In 2023, ABC’s Four Corners reported that more than 160 healthcare practitioners were allowed to continue working with patients after being sanctioned for sexual misconduct. The program covered the high-profile case of the neurologist Andrew Churchyard who was permitted to keep practicing under the supervision of a chaperone while he was under investigation for sexually assaulting a teenager. Churchyard died by suicide in 2016.

Australian Medical Association (AMA), Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) Weigh In

“Sexual misconduct is one of the worst breaches of trust that a [patient] can experience within the healthcare system,” said Bismark, who, as a psychiatrist, has seen the long-term impacts on patients firsthand. Patients whose trust has been betrayed by a doctor often avoid seeking medical care, meaning that preventable conditions can become life-threatening, she said.

Not everyone will look up their doctor in the public register in advance of an appointment but, if a boundary breach does occur, having tribunal decisions listed on the register “would give most [patients] reassurance that they could make a report about their experience and that they would feel more likely to be believed,” said Bismark.

AMA and the RACGP are in favor of greater transparency but have called on AHPRA to consider the impact on doctors when rolling out the changes to the public register.

“New powers must be used judiciously, sparingly, and proportionately,” Danielle McMullen, MBBS, president of the AMA and a general practitioner in Queensland, told Medscape News Australia. “The AMA remains concerned that the National Scheme does not do enough to support the well-being of health professionals.” AHPRA has a “duty of care” and should try to minimize the mental health and financial effects on healthcare practitioners subject to notification, she added.

“Patients should be able to make an informed choice about which health professionals they consult with, including being able to view a practitioner’s regulatory history,” Michael Wright, MBBS, PhD, the president of the RACGP, told Medscape Medical News.

“Our members support accountability and transparency but have expressed concerns about retaining information on the public register permanently,” he said. “It may be appropriate to publish information for a set period and then remove it from the register once it expires.”

Disclosure information for Bismark, McMullen, and Wright was not available at the time of publication.

Felicity Nelson is a freelance science journalist based in Sydney.