Dr Stewart Proper, a Melbourne orthopaedic surgeon based in Glen Iris, has been found by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) to have engaged in professional misconduct. The ruling, handed down on Friday, followed both an aggressive outburst he made during an operation and a separate online campaign of insults directed at fellow doctors, including psychiatrists. The finding matters because it holds a practising surgeon to account for conduct the tribunal regarded as falling well below professional standards.

During a complex and lengthy elbow revision operation on 13 October 2017 — at the end of a day in which he had already spent more than 10 hours at the hospital — Dr Proper threatened a colleague, reportedly saying he would "hunt you down" and urinate in their mouth if the patient developed an infection, though he later apologised. The tribunal also examined what it described as a "vitriolic campaign" of online posts against psychiatrists, in which he compared one psychiatrist to a rapist and used crude slurs, said to stem from a deeply personal dispute.