Sharwan Narayan

Introduction

Sharwan Narayan is an Australian general practitioner who worked at Moruya Medical Centre on the NSW south coast, and whose medical registration was cancelled after the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal found that over several appointments in early 2020 he inappropriately touched a patient, hugged her and made inappropriate sexualised comments. The NSW Health Care Complaints Commission prosecuted the complaint. The Tribunal found the complaint proven in its Stage 1 decision of 22 May 2025, found Narayan guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct and professional misconduct and, in Stage 2 orders imposed on 9 January 2026, cancelled his registration with a one-year non-review period.

Background Information

Narayan practised at Moruya Medical Centre, a general practice serving the Eurobodalla town of Moruya. In country towns the GP relationship is often the closest ongoing clinical relationship a patient has, and the boundary rules exist because a doctor’s touch during an examination sits inside a framework of clinical purpose the patient cannot directly verify — which is why sexualised comments and physical contact outside that framework are treated as categories of misconduct rather than matters of interpretation. The complaint against him was prosecuted by the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission before the Tribunal, the state’s senior disciplinary forum for registered health practitioners.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Tribunal findings. The findings below are the formal adjudications of the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal in a case prosecuted by the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission. They were found proven in the Tribunal’s Stage 1 decision of 22 May 2025. The sources report no criminal proceedings arising from the conduct.

It was alleged that between 7 February and 17 April 2020, while working at Moruya Medical Centre, Dr Narayan on various occasions inappropriately touched a patient, inappropriately hugged her and made inappropriate sexualised comments to her. In its decision of 22 May 2025 the Tribunal found those elements of the complaint proven and found Dr Narayan guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct and professional misconduct, publishing its Stage 1 decision through NSW Caselaw. The Tribunal then convened the separate protective stage of the proceeding, and in its orders of 9 January 2026 cancelled Dr Narayan’s registration with a non-review period of one year — meaning he could not even seek review of the cancellation until January 2027.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The Health Care Complaints Commission published its media release announcing the cancellation on 20 January 2026, eleven days after the Stage 2 orders. The conduct found proven was nearly six years old by then, and the two-stage timetable — liability in May 2025, protective orders the following January — is the standard structure of NSW Tribunal discipline rather than an anomaly. For a sole-GP-town practitioner, cancellation is a local event: Moruya patients learned from the Commission’s release, not from the practice, that their doctor’s registration was gone. The release records the proven conduct, the findings and the orders; it names no appeal and no public statement from Narayan.

Current Status

Narayan’s medical registration is cancelled, with the one-year non-review period running from the 9 January 2026 orders. He cannot practise as a doctor in Australia while unregistered, and the earliest he could seek review is January 2027; any return would require the Tribunal to be satisfied he is fit to practise after findings of physical and verbal boundary violations toward a patient. Both the Stage 1 and Stage 2 decisions are published through NSW Caselaw. The sources report no public statement from Narayan and no appeal against the findings or the cancellation. The patient is not named in any published material.

Impact on Their Career/Life

A general practice career ended with findings that convert everyday consultations — the touch, the hug, the comment — into adjudicated boundary violations spanning three months of appointments. A one-year non-review period is at the shorter end of the cancellation tier, but the practical effect outruns it: re-entry after a proven touching case requires a Tribunal satisfied that the sexualised conduct was aberration rather than pattern, and country doctors who lose their registration in a small coastal town rarely rebuild the patient base that supported the practice. His case joins the Commission’s 2026 run of published cancellations for practitioner-patient boundary breaches.

Sources

• NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, “Dr Sharwan Narayan – Medical Practitioner – Cancellation for Unsatisfactory Professional Conduct and Professional Misconduct,” 20 January 2026 — source