Professional Conduct reports – January 2024

Read time: 1 minute

CPSA cancels practice permit of Dr. Brianne Hudson

A CPSA Hearing Tribunal ordered the cancellation of the practice permit and registration of Dr. Brianne Hudson, a family physician from Grande Prairie.

Background

In January 2023, Dr. Hudson was found guilty of sexual abuse under the Health Professions Act (HPA) after engaging in a sexual relationship with a vulnerable patient between August 2019 and December 2019. Dr. Hudson was also found guilty of providing CPSA with false information during her 2020 annual renewal, claiming she had not engaged in a sexual or inappropriate personal relationship with a patient that had not been previously reported to CPSA. Dr. Hudson was subsequently suspended from practice, pending the determination of sanction.

After reconvening to consider submissions on sanction, the Hearing Tribunal ordered the cancellation of Dr. Hudson’s practice permit and registration, as required under section 82 of the HPA for a physician who is found guilty of sexual abuse of a patient.

The Tribunal also fined Dr. Hudson $5,000 for providing CPSA with false information during her annual renewal and ordered that she be responsible for paying two-thirds of the total cost of the investigation and hearing, to a maximum of $90,000, payable in equal installments over a period of five years.

Learnings

Patients are often at their most vulnerable when seeking health care and maintaining professional boundaries within the physician-patient relationship is an essential part of medical practice. A sexual relationship with a vulnerable patient is a clear breach of CPSA’s standards, a violation of the power imbalance that exists in every physician-patient relationship and an extreme abuse of the trust placed in physicians by their patients.

Under 2019’s An Act to Protect Patients, physicians registered in Alberta must complete mandatory training to prevent and address sexual abuse and sexual misconduct. This training (Patient Relations Parts 1 and 2) is still accessible in myCPSA for regulated members who would like to revisit these learnings.

We also encourage all regulated members to review our standards on personal and sexual boundary violations, to ensure full understanding and compliance—failure to meet the expectations of these standards can have serious, irreversible consequences on a patient’s wellbeing and a physician’s practice.