Doctor learns tribunal ruling after hearing for misconduct

A DOCTOR who embarked on an inappropriate relationship with a teenage patient after meeting her at Bristol Children’s Hospital has been suspended for a year, but not struck off permanently.

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Dr Cian Hughes, who now works for Google in Dublin and is a leading global figure in the research of the uses of Al in healthcare, met the girl when she was 13 and having an operation at the children's hospital in March 2011.

He was a 23-year-old fourth-year medical student at the University of Bristol at the time and began to exchange messages with the vulnerable girl, known as “Patient A’, after she was discharged and he had stopped being part of her medical care team.

Those messages continued until she was 16 in December 2013 when he admitted that he became “aware Patient A had developed personal feelings for him”.