The debate on uses and alleged abuses of emergency suspensions is likely to rumble on, and much of it will probably centre around when doctors pose a risk of “harming” patients.

This is because the legal implications of the NSW Court of Appeal ruling in the Dr William Pridgeon case are real.

The ruling was not about establishing technicalities with limited relevance to wider world.

The appeal court judges said emergency suspensions of doctors should not be based on some general sense of acting in the public interest but “understood as a reference to the public in the protection of the public’s health and safety”.