Impostors and impersonators: Fake health practitioners and the law

Abstract

The phenomenon of unqualified persons dishonestly holding themselves out as registered health practitioners has a lengthy and colourful history. Many notorious examples of such conduct have been exposed only after significant periods of successful deception by the perpetrators. However, there is a very limited scholarly literature on the phenomenon. A number of explanations have been proffered for such examples of deceptive conduct, including the commercial, the pathological and even the socially and sexually opportunist. Pseudologia fantastica is a term coined by Delbrück in 1891 for compulsive lying and has been mooted as an explanation for at least some impersonators of health practitione..