Michael Diskin

Introduction

Michael Diskin is a former paramedic who was struck off the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) register in May 2026 after a Conduct and Competence Committee panel found his fitness to practise impaired by reason of a caution and a conviction for offences against the same woman. Diskin received a simple caution for common assault in February 2024, then on 30 September 2024 was convicted at Newcastle upon Tyne Magistrates’ Court of stalking without fear, alarm or distress, for a course of conduct between May and July 2024 in which he repeatedly contacted the woman by text message and email and visited her home. The panel also found he had concealed the caution from both his employer and the HCPC for months, dishonestly, and heard the case in private to protect the woman’s identity.

Background Information

Diskin was registered with the HCPC as a paramedic, a regulated profession whose registrants enter patients’ homes and treat people in crisis, a role the law and the regulator hold to strict standards of conduct away from work as well as on duty. On 5 February 2024 he was issued with a simple caution for common assault. From 11 May to 12 July 2024, in North Tyneside, he pursued a course of conduct amounting to the stalking of a woman, identified in the published decision only as Person A, which he knew or ought to have known amounted to harassment: numerous contacts by text message and email and visits to her home address, an offence contrary to Section 2A of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. He was convicted at Newcastle upon Tyne Magistrates’ Court on 30 September 2024. An interim order had restricted his practice since November 2024.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated: caution and conviction, then struck off. The February 2024 caution and the September 2024 conviction at Newcastle upon Tyne Magistrates’ Court are matters of criminal record. The striking off order of May 2026 is the HCPC’s separate regulatory determination on the civil standard.

The HCPC allegation covered six strands: the caution for common assault; the stalking conviction with its course-of-conduct particulars; a failure to inform his employer of the caution; a failure to inform the HCPC of the caution until 20 June 2024; dishonesty toward his employer in seeking to conceal the caution; and dishonesty toward the HCPC in seeking to conceal it. The panel heard the entire case in private, to protect Person A’s private life: it found the evidence was highly personal and likely distressing to her, and that public awareness of the events would represent a significant unwarranted intrusion into her private life with no workable alternative protective steps. The panel found the strands proved, including the two dishonesty findings, and found his fitness to practise impaired by his misconduct, his caution and his conviction. The stalking conviction came while he was already under police caution for assaulting the same victim, a pattern the regulator treated as a sustained course of harm rather than an isolated lapse.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The panel directed the Registrar to strike Diskin from the register. An interim suspension had been in place since November 2024, covering the period through the striking off decision and any appeal window. The published decision preserves Person A’s anonymity throughout, including the hearing-in-private reasoning, and records the address details redacted. The case combines criminal-record consequences and regulatory ones: the caution and conviction remain on his record, and the striking off removes his registration independently of any sentence the court imposed. No public response from Diskin is recorded in the published decision materials covered here. The dishonesty findings — concealment from both his employer and the regulator — sit alongside the offending itself in the panel’s impairment analysis.

Current Status

Diskin was struck off on 21 May 2026, the final day of the three-day virtual hearing. He is no longer a registered paramedic and cannot practise under the protected title while the striking off order stands. The criminal record — the February 2024 caution and the September 2024 stalking conviction — stands independently, and the Protection from Harassment Act offence of which he was convicted is a record a future employer in any field can encounter. The victim is identified nowhere in the regulatory materials beyond the anonymised designation Person A. Restoration would require a future panel to revisit the dishonesty findings as well as the offending, and none is recorded as attempted.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The order ends his paramedic career while it stands, and the concealment findings give it a second axis: a registrant who hid a police caution for assaulting a woman from both his employer and his regulator for months, until June 2024, while continuing to hold the registration paramedicine requires. The case documents the HCPC treating stalking under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 as registration-ending conduct for a clinician whose job is entering strangers’ homes, and it shows the private-hearing mechanism protecting a stalking victim from re-victimisation through the regulatory process itself. For employers, it records the parallel reporting duties — to the employer and to the HCPC — being enforced through striking off when breached dishonestly. For Diskin, the caution, the conviction and the striking off together foreclose the profession and mark the record permanently.

Sources

• HCPTS, “Michael Diskin — Final Hearing, Conduct and Competence Committee, Struck off,” May 2026. source