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The Tennessee Court of Appeals has reasoned that the conviction for a DUI may constitute “unprofessional conduct” and result in sanctions for a physician by the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners. A Tennessee doctor pled guilty to a DUI in Arkansas and was subsequently placed on probation by the board. In Kleier v. Tennessee Bd. of Medical Examiners, the court reversed Chancellor Carol McCoy’s ruling that “absent some definition of the standard of care” TCA 63-6-214(b)(1) was impermissibly vague. This subsection is basically a catch-all provision which provides that a physician could lose his license for “unprofessional, dishonorable or unethical” conduct.
The court in Kleier tiptoed around (or through) the vagueness standard—which reasons that a statute is too vague if common men must “guess at its meaning”—and acknowledged that the doctor’s offenses were not “directly related” to the treatment he renders patients. However, the court essentially equated a DUI conviction with “an indication of ‘unfitness to practice medicine’,” as it might raise concerns “that the physician might harm members of the public” or “lower the medical profession’s standing in [sic] eyes of the public.”
