Registered nurse Darren William Eggerling officially reprimanded

A Queensland nurse who had sex with a patient, then mistakenly tried to organise a second tryst with the woman’s partner via text, has avoided suspension.

A Queensland nurse who had sex with a patient mistakenly tried to organise a second tryst with the woman’s partner via text, a tribunal has heard.

Registered nurse Darren William Eggerling, 28, was working at a Morayfield medical centre in May 2019 when he treated a woman for a foot injury, the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal heard.

The pair exchanged numbers and sent messages of a personal nature for about a month.

At the end of May they met at Eggerling’s home and had sex on one occasion, the tribunal heard.

Eggerling again treated the woman for her foot at the centre.

About a month later he received a text message from a person he thought was the woman. Eggerling started to organise a second sexual encounter, the tribunal heard.

“During this exchange, (Eggerling) came to realise the person he was communicating with was not patient A but her partner,” the tribunal decision published Thursday said.

“The respondent and patient A did not engage in any further sexual encounters.”

The partner later sent many “ disturbing” messages to Eggerling containing “threats of violence of quite an extreme nature’, the tribunal heard.

When confronted by his work, Eggerling initially denied the conduct but soon came clean and lost his job before picking up employment as a nurse a month later.

The Health Ombudsman opted not to take immediate registration action but referred it to the tribunal for disciplinary proceedings.

Tribunal member, retired District Court Judge John Robertson, found Eggerling’s crossing of professional boundaries was at the lower end of moral culpability given nurse and patient were of a similar age, the conduct was consensual and occurred only once and he was not the primary caregiver.

“The respondent’s inappropriate conduct was of brief duration and could not be described as exploitive or predatory,” Judge Robertson said.

There was no evidence the patient was harmed by the conduct or that she was vulnerable.

Since the incident Eggerling voluntarily did a course in maintaining professional boundaries

and expressed “genuine remorse” at an early stage.

“(I) acted unprofessionally and I fully regret breaking a professional boundary,” he told the tribunal.

Judge Robertson found Eggerling had an “impeccable background” and opted not to suspend his registration for three months as sought by the Health Ombudsman.

“In my opinion the very short period of suspension now would be punitive and would not add anything to the protection of the health and safety of the public,” he said.

Instead he official reprimanded Eggerling finding his conduct constituted “professional misconduct”.