Dr Dheyaa Jouda: Former GP at Grafton GP Super Clinic verdict at NSW health care tribunal

A former Grafton GP maintained an inappropriate relationship with a patient – smoking marijuana together, inviting him over to drink scotch, and in one instance calling or texting 50 times in a single day.

Generic image of doctor. Photo: iStock.

A former Grafton GP who smoked weed with a schizophrenic patient has been found to have brazenly breached his professional boundaries after a string of disturbing allegations were found to be true.

Dr Dheyaa Jouda, now aged 50, who previously worked as a doctor at the Grafton GP Super Clinic, has been found guilty of professional misconduct by the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Between February 9 and June 7 2019, the tribunal found Dr Jouda exchanged calls and text messages with Patient A, invited the patient to his home for dinner, consumed alcohol and marijuana with the patient at the patient’s home and loaned the patient money.

At the relevant time Dr Jouda was still employed at the Grafton GP Super Clinic.

Dr Jouda also asked the patient if he could use his name to complete a prescription not meant for him, falsely documented a prescription and falsely documented a medical consultation with the patient.

Now, the tribunal has published its judgment that the doctor maintained an inappropriate relationship with Patient A.

The Civil and Administrative Tribunal found the complaints proven.

At the time he first started to visit Dr Jouda’s practice, Patient A was 23 – 21 years younger than the doctor.

“To Dr Jouda’s credit, the majority of the complaints alleged against him were admitted,” the tribunal’s judgment states.

“The tribunal found (and Dr Jouda admitted) that he had while in the course of the therapeutic relationship, failed to maintain appropriate professional boundaries by reason of exchanging mobile numbers,” the tribunal stated in its judgment.

“(He) messaged or called Patient A on numerous occasions (and up to 50 instances on 13 March 2018) for purposes that were not clinically warranted.”

However, there was one complaint – namely, that the doctor had smoked marijuana with the patient during a social dinner – which was denied by Dr Jouda.

“The Tribunal is comfortably satisfied by the evidence, and the respondent’s silence, reinforced by the concession … that the respondent smoked marijuana with Patient A at his home on an occasion in 2018,” the tribunal stated.

When giving evidence about his relationship with the doctor, Patient A said it was “across several appointments, not just one consultation” when the doctor said to him words to the effect of “we should go for a drink sometime”.

Patient A stated that the Dr Jouda had told him that he came from Afghanistan, had no friends, and was “lonely” and he remembered “feeling sorry” for his doctor.

In those circumstances, Patient A accepted one of the doctor’s offers to see him “personally outside of the medical centre”.

In one of his statements, he described a dinner where the doctor drove to “Dan Murphy’s” and purchased “some scotch, an expensive brand, Glenfiddich” in a “green bottle” and the pair “started to drink the scotch”.

Patient A further stated that, after dinner, Dr Jouda said to him: “You smoke weed?” and he replied “sure”.

He stated the doctor: “went and came back with chat bud (bad quality marijuana). He got me to roll a few joints and we both sat and smoked it. I think we had two joints between us.”

Then Federal Minister for Health Tanya Plibersek at the official opening of the Grafton GP Super Clinic in 2011.

In making its protective orders on June 19, the Tribunal would have cancelled Dr Jouda’s registration if he was still registered.

The doctor’s registration expired on October 31 2019 and has not been renewed since that date.

But while Dr Jouda is presently suspended from practice in Australia, he is still practising as a general practitioner in Iraq.

However, in handing down the judgment, the tribunal disqualified Dr Jouda from being registered for a period of one year.