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Medical researcher Dr John Coverdale hopes a recent study he has undertaken will promote discussion and education about acceptable professional and social sexual behaviours between doctors and their patients.

Coverdale, from the Auckland School of Medicine, says doctor-patient social and sexual contact is an issue of importance for the medical profession.

"Such contact has been shown to be damaging to patients, and psychiatrists have been particularly active in researching this phenomenon, whereas less is known about how members of other medical specialties view it," he says.

In his study, an anonymous questionnaire was sent to a nationwide, randomised sample of New Zealand GPs, with a response rate of 86%.

Dating and sexual contact with patients was considered to be acceptable to 35% and 10% of GPs respectively.

Approximately, 6% reported having dated their own patient, 4% had had sexual contact with a patient and 2% had engaged in sexual contact with a former patient. A quarter of them had known a colleague who had engaged in sexual contact with a patient, showing that such behaviour is not covert. Only a few cases, however, appear to reach the attention of the New Zealand Medical Council or ethics committees.

Coverdale says the small, but nevertheless important, group of general practitioners who reported having dated or sexual contact with their own patients, and the greater numbers indicating that dating and sexual contact was acceptable, showed attitudes in conflict with existing medical council guidelines.

"The time seems right for specialties other than psychiatry to promote discussion and education about acceptable professional and social sexual behaviours."