Port Macquarie Doctor Terry Power’s licence cancelled after working on woman at her house

A doctor, previously ordered not to treat women, has had his licence cancelled after performing pressure point work on a nude model who posed for a book he was writing on pelvic floor exercises.

Doctor Terry Power from Port Macquarie.

A Port Macquarie doctor, previously ordered not to treat women, has had his licence cancelled after performing what he called “pressure point work” on a nude model who also posed for a book he was writing on pelvic floor exercises.

Chiropractor and Chinese medicine practitioner Doctor Terry Power came to the attention of authorities several years ago.

In 2020, the Chiropractic and Chinese Medical Council of NSW imposed a special condition on his licence, stating he must not consult, assess or treat female clients.

Now, in a recent tribunal ruling, he’s been uncovered performing various techniques ‘in the course of prayer and energy sessions’ on a woman he first met in 2007, referred to as Patient D, in her home after the special conditions were imposed.

But Dr Power told The NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal he met the woman in her home, not at the family practice, and that her claims were likely the result of “deep past trauma and a drug-affected mentality”.

Doctor Terry Power from Port Macquarie.

Evidence was provided from Dr Power’s brother Dr Leigh Power and his sister, a massage therapist, to show he stopped practising at the family clinic after the special conditions were imposed.

The tribunal heard that while the 2020 conditions permitted him to treat male patients, he felt he wasn’t in a fit state of mind to do so. However in 2022 he started treating a handful of male family members and friends to maintain his registration as a health practitioner.

Dr Terry Power has written The Inner Pelvis which claims chiropractors, osteopaths or physiotherapists are the best medical professionals to perform 'internal' pelvic treatments.

Dr Power further told the tribunal he and Patient D had been on good terms until late 2023 when he locked one of her “shamans” out of a building site where he was working and described the techniques they performed on each other as: “between friends, who were helping each other spiritually”.

He also said Patient D identified as a witch and her shamans were seeking to punish him because they falsely believed he had been doing “dark magic voodoo” on her.

The tribunal accepted that he had stopped treating patients at the family clinic and that he did not provide Patient D with the “full suite of chiropractic and Chinese medicine therapies he had been using in treating her before August 2020”.

But they ruled that while he did not deliberately breach conditions previously imposed, he showed a “surprising lack of judgement” which would hamper his ability to comply with any further conditions therefore prompting them to cancel his licence for two years.

In relation to using Patient D as a model for his book on pelvic floor exercises, the tribunal said it was irrelevant whether, as Dr Power claimed, it was her idea and she was an enthusiastic participant.

Dr Power said that Patient D did nude modelling work for local artists and had volunteered to model for his book.

But the tribunal said this was irrelevant; with the point being she was a former patient who “Dr Power understood had mental health and other problems”.

Dr Power has been the subject of a number of complaints to the Health Care Complaints Commission over the years including one in 2013 which was later withdrawn.

At the time, Dr Power told the commission that, on reflection, he delved too much into the pure emotional issues of a patient’s problems and would restrict phone contact with patients to business hours.

Following the recent licence cancellation on February 25 – with a two-year non-review period – Dr Power applied for a suppression order on the publication of his name.

He cited a number of reasons including that any media coverage would jeopardise his “fragile mental health” and further impact the family practice and large extended family.

Ultimately the tribunal ruled that none of these reasons met the ‘special, exceptional, or out of the ordinary’ category for a non publication order and denied the request.

Dr Power has also been ordered to pay 65 per cent of the commission’s costs.

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