A GP has been banned from practising for 18 months after going on leave and allowing a deregistered former doctor working at his practice to write scripts on his behalf.

The GP, 83, admitted the “serious lapse in professional judgement” but said the arrangement began without his knowledge when he left his small Adelaide practice for a month-long overseas trip in 2014.

The SA Civil and Administrative Tribunal heard that while the GP was on leave, a former doctor working as a technical officer at the practice logged into his computer and accessed patient records without the GP’s permission.

The former doctor, who had been deregistered for unprofessional conduct in 1999, then used the GP’s name and prescriber number to generate scripts for multiple patients.