Medical boards in Australia and New Zealand are reporting increasing complaints about inappropriate sexual behaviour when patients are sedated or anaesthetised.

The Australian New Zealand College of Anaesthetists has advised that people of both genders should be present when patients are sedated or anaesthetised, where practicable.

However, the article in the ANCZ December bulletin offered no data to support increasing complaints to medical boards. It does include 17 references to anaesthesia and hallucinations, especially with a particular drug.

The drug, propofol, is used for a variety of common procedures, but practitioners most at risk from complaints are dentists, anaesthetists and male recovery nurses, it warns.

Patients often confused the difference between dreaming (when they believed they were asleep) and hallucinations (when they believed they were awake).

“In addition, patients may start out believing they were dreaming, but change their minds when, for example, surgical or anaesthetic procedures have left bruising and/or swelling or there is pain or stiffness in certain anatomical areas such as perineum or mouth,” said the article, written by ANZCA’s executive director of professional affairs, Professor Barry Baker.

Research on hallucinations associated with anaesthesia was lacking, but medical boards had reported increasing complaints, he said.

New Zealand Nurses Organisation professional services manager Susanne Trim said she was not prepared to comment without further information, but there had not been a problem with recovery nurses as far as she was aware.

In Christchurch last month, a dentist who has name suppression denied three charges of professional misconduct over incidents in 1984, 1989 and 2001.

In all three cases he is alleged to have made the women to touch his penis while they were sedated and administered an unusually high dose of sedative.

Mr Baker said today that an Australian medical board contacted the college after it was concerned with increasing complaints from patients that doctors were using dreams or hallucinations as an excuse.

The name of the board was confidential, he said.

Having both a male and a female witness present would provide a much clearer defence over an alleged incident and the recommendation was not new, but suggested in previous international literature, he said.