Donna Picton
Introduction
Donna Picton is an operating department practitioner who was suspended from the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) register for four months in May 2026, after a conduct panel found that between 2020 and 2021 she repeatedly failed to communicate professionally with colleagues and a service user, and raised concerns about a colleague outside proper procedures, including by implying he was misusing opiates. The panel found current impairment with developing but incomplete insight and remediation, and imposed an interim suspension for the appeal period. The decision appears on MedicWatch’s independent record of regulator determinations, on the official HCPTS hearings site, and she is recorded among suspended practitioners on MedicWatch’s suspensions list.
Background Information
Picton qualified as an operating department practitioner in 2015 and worked at the Royal United Hospital until 2019, when she joined the Circle Bath Hospital as an ODP. During the pandemic she volunteered for redeployment to a Covid intensive care unit, assisting with airways, intubations and surgery, returning to the hospital in July 2020. The misconduct findings all date from October 2020 to August 2021. The context included disputed controlled-drug paperwork: a DATIX report about a syringe with a Fentanyl label found in a cupboard was investigated and closed in August 2020 as human error, and Picton said she raised a further report in October 2020 about a syringe she found, which she believed went unaddressed.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Abusive language and unsubstantiated accusations, proved on admission and colleague evidence. The panel found the core communication particulars proved while dismissing the more serious accusations it could not substantiate.
The panel found proved that in October 2020 Picton called one anaesthetist colleague a “bitch”, told another colleague that a second anaesthetist was a “cunt”, described a member of kitchen staff as a “wanker” and a second as a “shit chef”, and answered a colleague’s question about whether she wanted to be at work with “I don’t and fuck off”. In November 2020, after a gynaecology team brief, she said of the colleague she had earlier abused that he had “fucking lied” — the panel found that particular proved while dismissing companion allegations that she had called him “fucking useless” and “dangerous”. The conduct occurred in hospital areas to which patients had access, and it continued after she had already been given a disciplinary warning and improvement plan in October 2020 following an altercation.
The panel also found proved that at a meeting of operating department practitioners on 11 November 2020 Picton raised concerns about a colleague without following the trust’s procedures, implying that he took opiates to the toilet, used them for personal purposes, and had “mood swings due to taking drugs”. The panel accepted she was not dishonest or lying in her evidence but rather mistaken and repeating her own narrative, and noted her professed concern for patient safety sat awkwardly beside her failure to put those concerns through any proper channel. In August 2021, in a conversation with a service user about Canada, she also said “I blame the White, Male Priests”, which the panel found proved as an unprofessional communication with a service user.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The panel found current impairment and concluded that a four-month suspension was the proportionate mark for conduct that was repeated despite a live disciplinary warning, largely occurred where patients could hear it, and included broadcasting suspicion that a colleague was misusing opiates without any evidential basis or proper procedure. It credited that Picton had begun to develop insight and remediation, had a diagnosed condition relevant to her conduct and how she remediates it, was prepared to work on remediation over time, and had been experiencing personal difficulties at the material time. Against that it found her insight and remediation incomplete, identified a continuing risk of repetition, and found she had prioritised her own interests over those of patients and colleagues, including by leaving the hospital on 24 October 2020 and using a November 2020 meeting to air grievances about the colleague.
Current Status
On 14 May 2026, at the end of a hearing that ran from 5 to 14 May, the panel directed a four-month suspension order and a separate interim suspension of up to eighteen months covering the appeal period before the substantive order takes effect. Picton attended the hearing and was represented. The order is recorded on the HCPTS hearings site and on MedicWatch, which lists her among suspended allied-health practitioners. A reviewing panel in due course will look for completed remediation addressing the abusive communication, the use of proper channels for raising concerns, and the impact on the colleagues she accused.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Picton’s suspension ends a hospital career that had already been marked by a disciplinary warning, an improvement plan and the deterioration of working relationships the evidence described. The findings that she unsubstantiatedly implied a colleague was misusing opiates, and that the abusive language happened in patient-accessible areas and after a warning, are the parts of the record any future employer will read first. The four-month term and the panel’s acceptance that remediation has begun leave a route back to practice, but the burden sits on her to show the insight described as developing has become complete. The determination remains permanently searchable on public registers and independent records such as MedicWatch.