A Canberra doctor threatened to share pictures of a former patient, with whom he had started an intimate relationship, during an argument at the end of their affair.
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Dr Nsununguli Mbo has been suspended for professional misconduct after he admitted to inappropriate relationships with two patients.
Dr Mbo treated one of the women for about four months in 2012 and the pair began to communicate socially via phone and text message.
The pair started an intimate relationship in February the following year, within two months of the end of their professional association.
The relationship soured and ended in June 2014.
During an argument the woman allegedly made a slur and he threatened to share an image of her which had been inadvertently captured on his home security system.
Between May 2012 and September 2013, he also failed to maintain appropriate professional boundaries with a second patient by communicating with her via text message, providing clinical advice to her in a social setting, and continuing that advice after she had left the practice where he was working.
The medical board took Dr Mbo to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal for his conduct.
A judgment, published on Friday, revealed Dr Mbo last month signed an agreement in which he conceded he had behaved in a way that constitutes professional misconduct.
He was officially reprimanded and banned from practising medicine for 18 months, from July 2014 to December 2015.
He will be subject to 11 conditions when he returns to work in the new year, including work with a board-appointed mentor, and see a psychiatrist for one year and complete a training course to in relation to his "boundary violations".
Reports on his progress were ordered to be lodged with the board at several different time intervals.
The Medical Board of Australia will review the conditions after two years.
Tribunal senior member Mary Brennan noted the orders would protect the public by "ensuring that only health practitioners who are suitably trained and qualified to practise in a competent and ethical manner are registered".
"The Tribunal is satisfied that the practitioner had engaged in professional misconduct and had failed to maintain appropriate professional boundaries.
"In this case the Tribunal is also satisfied that the conditions to be imposed after the practitioner can reapply for registration should assist and support him in maintaining appropriate boundaries in the future and protect the public from future misconduct."
