Medical misogyny, bullying and professionalism: When regulation fails

In the recent past the term medical misogyny has gained a lot of attention. A reflection of the disdain with which women contend on an almost daily basis when presenting with medical concerns of any sort, it has tended to focus upon the dismissal of symptoms often with characterisation as some form of hysteria. Such judgement leads to women doubting their experiences of pain and illness, impacting on self-esteem as they fail to find relief from a persistent disorder. Women often won’t speak of something a doctor has dismissed, particularly a matter related to sexual or reproductive health. An innumerable sisterhood wallows in agony, struggles with anaemia, lies awake at night in a pool of sweat or is managing barely contained anxiety, and so few of those around them are aware.

So it is frequently with relief that a woman finds a doctor who will listen to her, who will not dismiss her symptoms. A referral to a specialist who provides explanations and plausible treatment for the health concerns she faces is a highly reassuring experience. It comes with a huge degree of trust traded on the validation of her experience, of her pain.

Medical misogyny – with a twist

When news of Dr Simon Gordon broke in February of this year many women found themselves wondering whom in the medical field they can trust.  A Melbourne gynaecologist, Dr Gordon is alleged to have performed unnecessary surgeries on many women. Studying a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery at the University of Auckland, graduating in 1989, Dr Gordon went on to specialise and was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) in 1997. He established his own practice, EndoHealth, in Melbourne’s CBD and was appointed at four hospitals, two private, two public. He has published a number of academic papers which continue to be cited.

The allegations are horrific. Invasive gynaecological surgery that has left women maimed. All have been in their childbearing years, diagnosed with endometriosis. Some have been left infertile. Pathology, surgical notes and accounts of other professionals indicated that the “treatment” was unwarranted. Those potential victims who have reckoned with the most devastating of the allegations have faced an early menopause as their ovaries have been removed and in at least one reported case, their uterus as well. Those who have spoken out in the Four Corners program have described severe post-surgical pain. Potential victims span the period from Dr Gordon’s admission as a fellow in 1997 to early 2026, with several firms leading individual and class action lawsuits.

Simply because they are hidden within the body, the harms that underpin the allegations faced by Dr Gordon are no less horrific than the abuses catalogued by Alice Seeley Harris against King Leopold II. As the brutal amputation of an appendage left a child without a hand, the removal of reproductive organs has left women unable to bear children. Arnold Thomas & Becker state that over 500 women have contacted their firm, concerned that they may have been harmed.

A medical professional, whatever their discipline, has a responsibility to advocate for their patient. That advocacy includes assisting them to understand their condition and to provide them with the information necessary to engage in a discussion of the options for management and to make an informed decision. For those without any medical background, the risks of misunderstanding can be higher than for others. The implementation of My Health Record has assisted patients to access medical results, but they can be hard to interpret. The need for doctors to ask questions, sometimes personally confronting, can broach matters that may alter one’s life in previously unrecognised ways. And to harm a patient in the manner alleged by Dr Gordon raises the crucial question of motivation.

When a medical professional tells a patient that the results of investigations show that they have a particular condition, most will seek a solution. They won’t necessarily ask to see the pathology result, the procedure notes, the day notes. The advice that follows is based upon an assumption that the underlying premise, the diagnosed condition or status of a condition, is accurate. Not all disease is easily diagnosed – sometimes it’s a barrage of tests and treatments to get to the root cause of a complaint; sometimes, the underlying complaint is unresolved. But in the absence of disease or medical evidence of such, a clinician who proceeds with unnecessary treatment breaches the most basic tenet of the patient-doctor relationship – trust.

Questions of Individual versus Institutional Accountability

This very ugly spectre of not only medical, but surgical misogyny, is also wrapped in the barbed wired of potential Medicare fraud. It questions the ethical basis of those involved, from the surgeon to the those who knew and did nothing.

A curiosity of the matter is that all of the alleged victims underwent surgery at the Epworth Hospital. Thus far there has been no indication of concerns raised about Dr Gordon at any other hospital. Operating as a not-for-profit facility and with ties to the Uniting Church, Epworth HealthCare could be considered one of Victoria’s elite private hospitals, with seven sites across Melbourne and one in Geelong. Epworth Richmond and Geelong each operate a fee-for-service Emergency Department. Among the claims made are that staff had raised concerns with management on more than one occasion about Dr Gordon’s procedures, but none had been pursued. From the exposé produced by the Four Corners program, it seems clear that the current allegations were not previously unvoiced within hospital ranks. Whether any investigations were conducted, including quality and safety reviews, remains to be confirmed, although suggestions seem to be that most concerns were ignored, piquing the interest the Health Minister who questioned the clinical governance of the hospital.

Then there is the College. A medical specialist who has, by all the measures and accounts, worked their way through the rigours of around 10 years of medical and surgical study and practice, has earned a degree of respect. The standard to achieve specialist recognition in Australia and become a fellow of the relevant college, is high and the very many hours of study and work are thoroughly consuming. The colleges stake their reputations on the quality of their membership. It takes an enormous scandal to make a college speak out against one of its own. Perhaps because such condemnation can lead to litigation by the scandalised individual (see legal action taken by Dr Munjed al Muderis against the Australian Orthopaedic Association), or perhaps because it raises questions about how many knew about the issue before they became public.

The Colleges rarely speak against one of their own. Hence the statement published by the RANZCOG marks an unusual step and a clear effort to distance itself from the allegations. Interviewed by Four Corners, Dr Desiree Yap raises concerns about the reporting mechanisms for doctors whose practice may raise concerns. More concerningly both she and Dr Shamitha Kathurusinghe allude to concerns of being a female, in the case of the latter, a brown female surgeon, in a male dominated profession and the risk of ostracization that will potentially destroy their careers. Entrenched bullying and sexual harassment among surgeons were highlighted over a decade ago, when another of the colleges came under scrutiny, namely the Royal Australasian Collage of Surgeons (RACS). How is it that in 2026, eleven years after the RACS responded to a report exposing abuse of women who move into surgery, other female surgeons are still being so pressured as to fear for retaliation by their own colleagues?

The Medical Board of Australia, an arm of the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency (AHPRA) was apparently alerted to concerns regarding Dr Gordon on more than one occasion. Whether any investigations were conducted is unknown, but the regulator will face stringent scrutiny in the months ahead, particularly if the allegations against Dr Gordon are borne out. Afterall, what is the purpose of a regulator if it is inept?

Not to be forgotten are Medicare, who so assiduously assure that patients claim the minimum possible, but seem to be unable to identify a surgeon performing an unusually high number of high-fee earning surgeries, specifically  item number 35461 which returns $1,449 to the clinician. Let’s make a crucial point here – whilst Epworth may be a not-for-profit hospital, it seems that Dr Gordon was not of the same mind. He charged a significant out of pocket fee, in the case of one patient $14,000. Medicare has the capacity to identify and investigate abnormally high claims from a specific clinician. Why did repeated billing for a specific major surgery not raise concerns? Year upon year, how did he fly under the radar? And why are the only allegations associated with the Epworth Hospital?

Procedural consent

Consent to treatment, particularly in matters of surgery, requires that the patient understand the risks of intervention and potentially the other options. More importantly, it requires that the surgeon is operating within their scope of practice and is behaving in the best interests of the patient. That means answering a patient’s questions and mapping out not only the expected benefits, but the things that could go wrong. 

Questions posed by the patient will vary from the ill-informed hearsay of a friend to more cogent arguments of someone with a degree of health literacy. And as patients, even health care workers are reticent to speak out against a colleague whom they fear is not behaving ethically or outside their scope of practice, because they are perhaps more aware of the consent process. But regardless of the health literacy of the patient, consent is fundamental to the relationship and is implicitly connected to the trust the patient places in the treating doctor. To remove healthy tissue, to maim a patient, is not to act in the best interests of the patient and is a gross breach of that trust. For a regulator, a hospital, to fail to respond to such allegations places the very foundations of health care on quicksand. Consent is of no consequence when once a patient is anaesthetised the surgeon does whatever he wants.

Conclusion

The controversy raised by the allegations against Dr Simon Gordon and the Epworth Hospital pose a much larger problem – the effectiveness of the protection mechanisms that have been built up over the past three decades. From the effectiveness of clinical governance, to clinician regulation, to medical and professional ethics, health care, in particular surgery, must address its protectionist tendencies to ensure the abuses that have riven medicine and surgery in Australia cease. Whether the allegations against Dr Gordon are proved or not, there can be no denying that the repeated scandals destabilise the entirety of health care. In a post-truth world where treatment with invermectin and immunisations are points of debate, any allegations of unwarranted treatment only bolster the arguments of those already distrusting of those working in the health care industry.

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