A Winnipeg doctor who has been licensed for nearly four decades has been ordered to largely stop practising medicine, after admitting to misconduct the provincial regulator called “serious and concerning.”
The allegations against dermatologist Dr. Earl Minuk included inappropriate behaviour in 2021 and 2022 with a patient, recent reasons for a decision from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba said. According to that document, Minuk called the patient to ask her on a date, and offered her gifts and trips in hopes of starting a relationship.
Minuk also sent the woman inappropriate texts seeking her companionship, even after she’d rejected him — texts she later shared with the regulator’s investigators, who found Minuk hadn’t provided those messages when he’d been asked to respond to the allegations.
While Minuk acknowledged his communication with the woman was improper — among a number of allegations he pleaded guilty to — he said his failure to provide certain texts to the regulator was inadvertent.
“Dr. Minuk’s misconduct involved professional boundary violations with patients, which strike at the core of the trust that is expected in the physician-patient relationship,” the decision said.
The disciplinary panel found a joint recommendation put forward by lawyers for Minuk and the regulator fell “within the realm of reasonable and ought to be accepted,” according to the decision, but the panel “remains concerned with Dr. Minuk’s level of contrition and future compliance.”
That recommendation included an order for Minuk to stop practising medicine as of June 30, with exceptions allowing him to practise dermatology only for laser treatment of vascular lesions, and the assessment, management and treatment of moles, skin cancer and pre-cancerous lesions, the regulator’s decision said.
Minuk, who has been licensed to practise internal medicine and dermatology since 1989, also admitted to communicating directly with and seeing another patient without a chaperone present in 2022, violating a previous requirement that he have a female attendant present for any encounter with a female patient.
In that case, Minuk said he was communicating with the patient about an emergency medical condition, which was allowed by an exception in his requirements. He later met with her about the same condition while the clinic was closed, which he said was an unintentional breach of his chaperone requirements.
The regulator’s decision said those incidents “were not isolated occurrences,” as Minuk “has a history of professional boundary violations which led to the communication and chaperone conditions.”
Previous incidents
Those previous incidents include one in 2009, where one of Minuk’s patients declined further paid upper lip wrinkle treatment after she wasn’t satisfied with the results. The woman alleged Minuk “responded by abruptly ending the appointment in a rude and unprofessional manner, which left her feeling offended and disrespected.”
In 2014, a patient Minuk saw for a spreading skin lesion in her pubic area said Minuk “commented on her being naked” when she lowered her pants to show him the rash.
That resulted in Minuk being required to complete a self-directed learning program in 2016, after the College of Physicians and Surgeons investigation committee found he “would benefit from further specific training to gain communication patterns that respect dignity of patients.”
Minuk was also later the subject of complaints by a former employee, who alleged he behaved unprofessionally from November 2018 to January 2020, “including by making inappropriate comments that caused his employee significant discomfort” and having a lack of appropriate professional boundaries in the workplace.
That led to Minuk agreeing not to have any closed-door meetings with staff members.
After getting a referral from the college registrar in 2020, the investigation committee again investigated Minuk, this time after a patient alleged he’d “engaged in inappropriate communication and/or conduct with her and another female patient.”
As a result, Minuk got a psychiatrist for an independent assessment, who provided recommendations to address patient safety concerns, and in 2022 agreed to conditions including having a chaperone when seeing female patients.
Another investigation in 2021 involved a woman who said Minuk had made “insensitive comments to her about her hair loss and treated her in an unkind manner” at a medical consultation for alopecia. The investigation committee raised “serious concerns” about that complaint, given that it happened after he’d already completed education in communication.
“The committee was particularly critical of Dr. Minuk and advised that it expected him to have learned from both the prior education and this complaint,” the decision said.
As part of the joint recommendation on discipline, Minuk is still bound by his previous requirements for chaperoned encounters with female patients. He was also ordered to pay $10,000 in costs for the investigation and inquiry into his misconduct, the decision says.