Patient threatened him, his family and demanded 24/7 access: Doctor gets 8-month suspension in a ‘truly unique case’

An Ontario doctor who engaged in thousands of off-clinic and unbilled communications with a patient with borderline personality disorder—who told him she was getting a gun and wished death for the doctor and his familyhas been suspended for eight months and ordered to pay $6,000 in college costs. Dr. Simon Jonathan O’Brien, a Kingston, Ont., psychiatrist who holds various leadership positions in his community, was found guilty of professional boundary violations in what the Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal acknowledged was a “truly unique case.” “It appears from the many letters of support we received that this episode is an aberration in an otherwise exemplary life of service in the medical profession,” the tribunal told Dr. O’Brien in a reprimand delivered by videoconference. “While we have decided to accept the joint submission on penalty, we acknowledge the unique and extraordinarily challenging circumstances, including threats to your and your family’s safety, which were the background to your professional misconduct." The tribunal also sanctioned Dr. O’Brien for other violations, including providing prescriptions for the patient’s husband and cat—with both prescriptions written under the patient’s name—and for failing to report the patient to the provincial transportation ministry as a safety risk after he found out she had been in a car accident while impaired, and that she had arrested and gotten her licence suspended for careless driving. Read: Just trying to help: Doctor slammed after he 'worked around the rules' so a patient could get meds The findings of guilt on professional boundary violations stem from the thousands of all-hours text, email and phone communications between Dr. O’Brien and the patient. In the fall of 2014—two years after she began seeing Dr. O’Brien—the patient got a job that allowed her to gain access to information about Dr. O’Brien, including his private cell phone number, unlisted home landline and home address. She was also able to get information that identified his family members, their addresses and phone numbers. The patient began calling Dr. O’Brien on his private cell phone and home landline. She sent him emails telling him how much she knew about him and his family. In some of these emails, she told him he should be afraid of her and that her husband was getting her a gun. She told Dr. O’Brien she hoped he and his family members would die, and that she carried a knife. The patient often became upset and threatening when Dr. O’Brien did not respond right away to her emails and phone calls. Cell phone records showed a recurring pattern of the patient calling Dr. O’Brien’s cell phone multiple times and, if he didn’t answer, calling his home phone shortly after. Read: Exhausted and buried alive in an administrative avalanche? The patient called Dr. O’Brien at all hours—throughout the workday, late into the evenings, on weekends and even when Dr. O’Brien went on vacation. The college found that over the course of about six years the patient called Dr. O’Brien on his home or private mobile 1,244 times and sent him 3,888 text messages. Between mid-2015 and early 2020, there were almost 70,000 email exchanges—or about 46 a day on average, seven days a week—between Dr. O’Brien and the patient. In response to the patient’s communications, Dr. O’Brien also called her 318 times from his home and private cell phone, with some of these calls made after he had received information that she was suicidal. Dr. O’Brien did not bill the province for most of the time he spent treating the patient. The college also learned during its investigation that the patient had asked Dr. O’Brien to review various documents she was working on for her employer, which included confidential third-party information. Dr. O’Brien acquiesced to these requests. He had also altered the patient’s chart at her request, even though he did not agree with these changes. Read: 'In 2020, I was involved in a terrible outcome'

Patient threatened him, his family and demanded 24/7 access: Doctor gets 8-month suspension in a ‘truly unique case’

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