Health Ombudsman v Samimi [2025] QCAT 457

Health (Drugs and Poisons) Regulation 1996 (Qld)

C J Lloyd, Principal Legal Officer of the Office of the Health Ombudsman

• [1] The respondent is a registered pharmacist. He was born on the 3 November 1990. He obtained registration with the Pharmacy Board of Australia ('Board') on 4 December 2014. His registration was suspended by way of immediate registration action taken by the Health Ombudsman on 11 August 2021 and remains suspended.
• [2] The respondent has a relevant disciplinary history. On 25 August 2016, he falsified a prescription in the name of a person he knew. As a result, the Board imposed conditions on his registration which required him to complete an approved program of education, and to attend to a reflective practice report which reflects on the ethical issues arising out of the relevant codes. He failed to comply with those conditions.
• [3] The Tribunal is dealing with two referrals. The relevant conduct relates to the respondent's employment as a locum pharmacist in different pharmacies in Queensland.
• [4] The first referral relates to the respondent's employment at a pharmacy in Moranbah between 15 March and 21 March 2020, when he was employed as a locum. He falsified four prescriptions, and falsified records accordingly. As a result, he was charged with criminal offences. He pleaded guilty to one count of falsification of a record and one count of attempted fraud, covering all acts of dishonesty in the Emerald Magistrates Court on 31 May 2022. He was sentenced to three years' probation, with no convictions recorded.
• [5] The applicant has filed the record of the court proceedings, including a number of reports, including one by a psychiatrist who considered that the respondent suffered from a major depressive disorder.
• [6] As Mr Lloyd submits, none of the expert reports have addressed any connection between the respondent's mental illness and his criminal behaviour. The amount he attempted to misappropriate had a value of $75,000.
• [7] The respondent has disengaged from the proceedings and has not filed any material. He has not appeared today.
• [8] The second referral relates to the misappropriation of medication and falsifying records to cover his dishonesty over an eight-month period between 21 February 2020 and 31 October 2020.
• [9] As Mr Lloyd notes in his written submission, one of the reasons advanced during the criminal proceedings at the Magistrates Court in Emerald was that he was experiencing financial hardship in 2020. As he submits, the inference is readily available that, in relation to this course of conduct relating to the medication, which was high-cost medication, which had a non-subsidised cost of $63,500, he stole the drugs to on-sell for his own financial benefit.
• [10] The unchallenged evidence adduced by the applicant, which includes evidence from various doctors whose names were forged on various scripts by the respondent, his employer who tracked his dishonest conduct after it was discovered on 16 March 2021 when the Medicines Compliance and Human Tissue Unit contacted the pharmacy manager to report discrepancies with respect to his prescribing habits, clearly establishes the particulars in both referrals to the relevant standard.

• [11] The conduct proved is particularly serious. It involves dishonesty in the respondent's professional role as a pharmacist inferentially for his own financial benefit. By his conduct, he has breached fundamental provisions of the codes referred to in both referrals and sections of the Health (Drugs and Poisons) Regulation 1996 (Qld).
• [12] I agree with Mr Lloyd that the respondent's actions, proved in relation to the second referral, involved calculated and sustained dishonesty. He entered false prescriptions into the dispensary system and went to great lengths to conceal his deception by creating false records. Having said that, the fraud, in a professional sense, was quite crude, and would inevitably be detected.
• [13] The respondent's conduct in both referrals constituted a gross breach of trust placed on him by various parties including his employers, the Department of Health, patients whose details were used in the creation of false health records and by medical practitioners whose details were also used to create false prescribing details.
• [14] His conduct readily satisfies all three limbs of the section 5 definition of professional misconduct in the National Law including subparagraph (c), being conduct that is inconsistent with him being a fit and proper person to hold registration as a pharmacist.

• [15] The relevant principles are accurately set out in Mr Lloyd's helpful written submission and need not be repeated.
• [16] Since May 2024, the respondent appears to have made a conscious decision not to engage in the proceedings. I agree with Mr Lloyd that this alone demonstrates a lack of insight and a reluctance to come to terms with the gravity of his conduct, and its capacity to undermine public confidence in the profession.
• [17] This is consistent with his response to conditions imposed on his registration by the Board in relation to the finding that he falsified a prescription in 2016. It suggests a person with a complete lack of insight into and remorse for his misconduct.
• [18] Given the nature of the respondent's conduct, I agree with the submission made by Mr Lloyd that general deterrence plays a significant part in the Tribunal's exercise of discretion on the basis that the proper handling of drugs is a fundamental responsibility of a pharmacist. The respondent's conduct here was entirely incompatible with the legal and ethical obligations of a pharmacist, the conduct contravened the Board's professional standards and breached the regulations which governed the lawful use of medicines and poisons in Queensland, and his actions were fundamentally dishonest and seriously damaging to the reputation of the profession.
• [19] The applicant seeks an order that the respondent be reprimanded and that his registration be cancelled, and that he be disqualified from applying for registration until the 11 August 2027. Effectively, that gives effect to the fact that his registration has been suspended since 11 August 2021 so that an effective period of preclusion by way of protected response would be six years. The comparatives referred to by Mr Lloyd in his outline readily support that submission.
• [20] Those decisions underscore the seriousness of conduct of this kind committed by a professional pharmacist, and how it critically undermines the ability of public health agencies like the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Medicare to provide affordable health care to the public.
• [21] Accordingly, it is the decision of the Tribunal that:
  1. Pursuant to s 107(2)(b)(iii) of the Health Ombudsman Act 2013 (Qld), the respondent has behaved in a way that constitutes professional misconduct.

1. Pursuant to section 107(3)(a) of the HO Act, the respondent is reprimanded.
2. Pursuant to s 107(3)(e) of the HO Act, the respondent's registration is cancelled.
3. Pursuant to s 107(4)(a) of the HO Act, the respondent is disqualified from applying for registration not before 11 August 2027.
4. Pursuant to s 62(2)(a)(ii) of the HO Act, the immediate registration action imposed by the Health Ombudsman on 11 August 2021 is set aside.
5. Each party must bear their own costs of the proceedings.