Melfort doctor’s licence suspended over allegations of assaulting children, self-prescribing | CBC News

A Saskatchewan doctor had his medical licence suspended over allegations he physically assaulted children in separate incidents and self-prescribed medication.

Dr. Robert Steffen works at Family Physicians Group in Melfort, Sask., a city of nearly 6,000 about 160 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon.

Steffen had his licence suspended on Dec. 2, 2024, according to a physician profile on the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan (CPSS). 

That’s just a few days after a pair of penalty hearings on Nov. 29, 2024. 

Full decisions have yet to be published online, but documents lay out the four charges made against Steffen. 

One document lays out three charges. They include:

• Improper conduct for allegedly, on or about Feb. 3, 2019, striking a nine-year-old “child in the face for disobeying a direction.”
• Improper or unprofessional conduct for allegedly prescribing himself medication on one or more occasions between 2019 and 2023.
• Unprofessional conduct and dishonesty for responding to the complaint about self-prescribing medication by providing a letter that was “false and/or misleading” on the number times he had allegedly self-prescribed medication, types of medications he had self-prescribed, and reasons or circumstances in which he had self-prescribed medication.

A second document lays out another charge:

• Unprofessional conduct when on or about Feb. 29, 2023, Steffen is alleged to have spanked an eight-year-old patient across the butt. Steffen is alleged to have during an appointment with the child’s mother present, after the child refused to co-operate and was pulling on a piece of medical equipment.

Steffen has agreed to not have any in-person professional encounter in his office practice with patients under the age of 16, except in the presence of a practice monitor, according to the college.

That restriction was implemented on Nov. 21, 2023.