Altered/Forged Medical Documentation
A reminder for academic staff from the ABP Special Consideration Officer
As we are nearing the end of the semester and a busy time for students submitting requests for extensions, please keep the following in mind regarding altered/forged medical documentation.
Be wary or forged or falsified medical certificates and/or other supporting documentation submitted by students seeking extensions/Special Consideration.
- Click here for the ways this has been detected in the past, and next steps for academics to take.
- You can also find more information on identifying and responding to other forms of academic misconduct here.
The following reminder has been provided by the ABP Special Consideration Officer, Maria Lodola-Price:
If you have any concerns about medical certificates which you have received from your students requesting extensions, please forward them to abp-specialconsid@unimelb.edu.auand we will contact the medical practitioner to verify its authenticity.
We are aware that students do not always understand the consequences of submitting falsified documentation, which is usually the termination of the student’s enrolment. We’d like to take this opportunity to educate students about the consequences of falsifying medical documentation.
If you wish, feel free to post the following announcement on your subject's LMS site so that students are aware of the seriousness of submitting falsified documentation:
We all know that Uni can be very stressful at times – especially during the assessment period. This has occasionally led students to providing forged or falsified medical certificates and/ or other official documentation to support applications for extensions and or Special Consideration. Some may not think that this is a big deal, but it can have serious consequences. Providing altered medical documentation is fraud. It is a prosecutable offence under the Victorian Crimes Act. If you are caught, your enrolment at the University will likely be terminated. Your academic transcript would also include the following statement “TERMINATED FOR MISCONDUCT”.
The university regularly verifies whether medical and other supporting documents are legitimate, so don't risk it.
You can find further information on the Student Union’s website here: https://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/fake-med-cert/