28 Nov 2018

Fake psychiatrist Linda Astor remembered

From Morning Report, 8:13 am on 28 November 2018

The Medical Council says it can't rule out a bogus doctor landing a job in New Zealand - but the odds are very low. The comments come after the discovery an Auckland med school drop out, Zholia Alemi, had worked for more than two decades as a psychiatrist in Britain. It has happened here too - most notoriously in 1997 when a fake psychiatrist, known as Linda Astor tricked a string of authorities to become head of clinical psychiatry at Nelson-Marlborough Health. For the first time, a Nelson psychologist Robyn Byers talks about her former co-worker - to our Nelson reporter Tracy Neal, who broke the story on Linda Astor.