TORONTO - Researchers at a Toronto hospital have found that in the last decade, one-fifth of all doctor disciplinary cases involved repeat offenders.
Dr. Chaim Bell at St. Michael's Hospital looked at the cases of doctors who were disciplined by their provincial medical licensing bodies between 2000 and 2009.
There were 606 cases in total, and Bell found that 92 per cent of those doctors were men and that a majority were family physicians who had been practising for a long time.
The findings are published today in the journal Open Medicine.
Bell says the number of doctors disciplined each year only represents about one per cent of all physicians in Canada.
He found that 51 doctors committed 64 repeat offences, or 19 per cent of the total offences, and says there needs to be greater monitoring of physicians who have been disciplined.
?? The Canadian Press, 2011