Six failed disciplines, 126 shifts at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital and a blank registration number on the forms: the UNSW student who worked as an intern without a degree

Australia regulates its doctors through a single national scheme. The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, Ahpra, keeps the public register for the Medical Board of Australia, and every doctor, including a first-year intern, must hold registration before treating a patient. Section 116 of the National Law makes it an offence to claim to be qualified to practise when you are not.

According to Ahpra, Zhi Sin Lee was partway through a Doctor of Medicine at the University of New South Wales in 2020 when she failed several disciplines and was told she would not be eligible to graduate. She still took up a 2021 intern position at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital and worked 126 shifts between 18 January and 9 August 2021. Ahpra charged her under section 116 with falsely claiming to be qualified. She pleaded guilty on 18 November 2021, and on 20 January 2022 the Local Court of New South Wales sentenced her to two years' imprisonment served by intensive correction order in the community, a $10,000 fine and $3,400 in Ahpra's costs. Ahpra said it was the first prison term imposed under the National Law.

The Canberra Times, in an AAP court report, said Lee was 27, had failed six core disciplines in October and had left her registration number blank on multiple assessment forms. Magistrate Glenn Bartley said she had lied day after day, shift after shift, and that in a public hospital one error could lead to death. AusDoc reported that she was seen to be underperforming within weeks and placed under additional supervision, and that her defence said she was under extreme financial and emotional pressure from parents who had spent about $300,000 on her education. In March 2022 the Medical Board of Australia reported that the Sydney District Court had confirmed the conviction and fine on appeal but cut the community-served term from 24 to 18 months, saying no sentence other than imprisonment would be appropriate.

The check that failed was the simplest one. An intern's registration number is public and takes seconds to look up, yet assessment forms were accepted with the field empty. Supervisors noticed weak performance quickly but treated it as a training problem rather than a prompt to confirm the trainee was on the register.

Two lessons follow. A degree and a registration are separate things, and the regulator's register, not the university or the hospital, is the final word on whether someone may practise. And if a course is going badly, the money already spent is not a reason to hide it. Families who have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars need the truth early, because the alternative here was a conviction, a fine and a prison term.