Piotr Nowakowski
Introduction
Piotr Nowakowski is a paramedic who was struck off the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) register in September 2023 after a reviewing panel found wide-ranging deficiencies of competence — patient assessment, documentation, medicine administration and handover — and more than three years of total non-engagement with his regulator. The panel found a continuing high risk of repetition and patient harm, and concluded that a further suspension would not adequately protect the public. The case, handled throughout as lack of competence rather than misconduct, appears on MedicWatch’s independent record of regulator determinations, on the official HCPTS hearings site, and on MedicWatch’s suspensions list.
Background Information
Nowakowski worked as a paramedic for East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust. The allegations put to the substantive panel centred on an episode on 11 March 2018 involving Patient A, whose chest pain he allegedly did not properly investigate or document with an OPQRSTA history, alongside wider clinical and record-keeping failures involving three patients covering assessment, medication administration, privacy, consent and handover. He was also said to have failed to reach the required standard in ECG recognition, trauma life support and online medicines assessments. The substantive hearing concluded on 19 March 2021 with a suspension order, and he has not engaged with the HCPC since an email in June 2020.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Wide-ranging lack of competence, then three years of silence. The conduct was found as lack of competence, not misconduct; the striking-off followed his refusal to engage with three panels.
The substantive panel found the competence failings proved: assessment and documentation of a patient presenting with chest pain, deficiencies across medicine administration and handover for three patients, and failures in core clinical skills including ECG recognition and trauma life support. It treated the case as lack of competence and imposed a suspension order. At the first review, on 6 April 2023, the panel found him impaired on both the personal and public components, noted no engagement since June 2020 and no evidence of insight, reflection, remediation or training, and extended the suspension for six months to give him a further chance to engage — observing that once a registrant had been suspended substantively for two years, striking off became available.
At the third review, on 12 September 2023, the panel noted he was thought to be living in Poland and had not engaged with the HCPC for over three years. He had failed to demonstrate insight, remorse, any continuing professional development or an apology. The panel found the risk of repetition high, said his wide-ranging lack of competence struck at the heart of the trust placed in paramedics, and concluded that no lesser sanction than a striking-off order would meet the risks to the public or maintain confidence in the profession.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The striking-off was imposed under the HCPC’s two-year rule, which permits the sanction for lack-of-competence cases only after a registrant has been continuously suspended for at least two years — a threshold Nowakowski crossed precisely because the earlier panels kept giving him opportunities he never took. The HCPC argued, and the panel accepted, that the public would be troubled by any finding other than current impairment where a registrant had neither participated in the review process nor shown any commitment to addressing his lack of competence. Nowakowski is listed among suspended practitioners on MedicWatch’s public suspensions list.
Current Status
The panel ordered striking off to take effect when the existing suspension expired, ending his registration. The determination is published on the HCPTS hearings site and recorded on MedicWatch, which lists him among practitioners removed from practice. He remains outside the register unless he pursues the formal readmission route, which would require him to demonstrate to a fresh panel that the competence deficiencies — unaddressed now for years — have been remedied.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Nowakowski lost his paramedic registration and with it the ability to work in the profession in the United Kingdom, with the striking-off order public and permanent. The panel’s findings — that he put patients at unwarranted risk of harm, breached fundamental tenets of the profession, and ignored three sets of panel directions about the engagement that would have allowed a return — mean any future application faces the recorded high risk of repetition. The case stands as the endpoint the reviewing panels had flagged at every stage: competence failings compounded by silence become removal.
Sources
- “HCPTS review extended Piotr Nowakowski’s suspension by six months, MedicWatch” source
- “HCPTS struck paramedic Piotr Nowakowski off the register, MedicWatch” source
- “Piotr Nowakowski review, HCPTS hearings” source
- “Piotr Nowakowski striking off, HCPTS hearings” source
- “Suspensions, MedicWatch” source