A Pictou County doctor’s licence has been suspended for four months for breaching professional and sexual boundaries with colleagues in the workplace.
Dr. Enyinnaya Ezema made inappropriate comments on a number of occasions in 2013 to one of his colleagues, the Nova Scotia College of Physicians and Surgeons said in a decision released on its website Tuesday.
A second complaint said that while discussing a mutual patient with another work colleague, “he put his arms around her and ran his tongue around her lower lip while holding on to her,” the decision said.
The college dismissed a third complaint related to charges in January 2014 in which he asked a colleague about a personal relationship and had told her he would be taking her out for a drink.
“The hearing committee found that this incident occurred but that it did not constitute professional misconduct in all of the circumstance,” the decision said.
Ezema must pay the college costs of $75,000.
The college’s finding of professional misconduct was made on Sept. 11, 2017, but that finding wasn’t made public at the time. The hearing committee reconvened in January to hear submissions prepared by the college and by Ezema’s counsel regarding the penalty to be imposed. The collage said the penalty decision was released July 3 although it wasn’t made public until Tuesday.
Ezema was charged with assault in connection with the Dec. 16, 2014, incident in which he hugged a colleague and ran his tongue over her lip. Those charges were stayed in February 2016. That colleague, a mental health nurse, worked with Ezema in an outpatient clinic in New Glasgow.
Ezema began a psychiatry practice in December 2012 after moving to Pictou County from the United Kingdom.
