A former president of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians inappropriately touched seven female interns and registrars, a tribunal has found.

Associate Professor Leslie Bolitho, a 2010 AM recipient and associate professor at the University of Melbourne, breached professional boundaries when he touched the women on their backs, bottoms, shoulders or thigh while supervising them between 2014 and 2018, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal said.

The internal medicine physician first came to the attention of AHPRA back in 2019, leading to the Medical Board of Australia imposing conditions that banned him from supervising medical students and junior doctors.

In one incident at a hospital in Wangaratta, in north-east Victoria, Professor Bolitho deliberately put his hand on a registrar’s mid-thigh while they were seated next to each other at a farewell dinner, with the tribunal describing his conduct as “inherently sexual and improper”.