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Was This Psychiatrist Treated Fairly?

By John Mesirow

You are psychologist Andrew Jacobs, and you need a psychiatrist to treat your wife for depression. Not surprisingly, you refer her to the same Harvard-trained psychiatrist you've been referring people to for 10 years. Surprisingly, this man, Kansas Dr. Douglas Greenens, tells your wife that she is in an unhealthy marriage. He then has a sexual relationship with your wife while she is still his patient! You find out, so he ends the doctor-patient relationship, but soon thereafter, resumes the intimate relationship. Your wife then divorces you and marries ... Dr. Greenens.

What punishment do you think the Kansas Board of Healing Arts handed down for this major violation of professional ethics? Before I tell you, let me also share with you some additional information that the Board had in its possession, as reported by The Topeka Capital-Journal:

Investigators with the Kansas board also have benefit of the Missouri healing arts board's confidential 300-page report on Geenens' out-of-bounds association with women. Geenens was publicly reprimanded by Missouri regulators and, to escape broader discipline, agreed in October to "retire" his license in that state.

Snap! 300 pages? On top of this incident? The punishment: a one-week suspension of his license! UFB! (Also, his practice will be supervised for 2 years, and he has to attend a course.(La di da.) Maybe he's emerged from all of this a changed man?

Jacobs said Geenens bragged that a member of the healing arts board secretly promised him the board wouldn't hand down a severe punishment. Meanwhile, Geenens filed an ethics complaint against Jacobs in Missouri, but the case was dismissed a year later.

Was that it for Greenens? He (or more likely, his insurer) took a relatively small hit:

Jacobs filed a civil lawsuit, later settled for $100,000, alleging Geenens prescribed psychiatric drugs to cause his wife to accept the doctor's advances.

You can read more (a fair amount) here.

Full post as published by Legal Juice on April 25, 2008 (boomark / email).