Sreenithi Sudhakar
Introduction
Sreenithi Sudhakar is a physiotherapist who was struck off the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) register in January 2024 after a reviewing panel found she had shown no meaningful insight, remediation or engagement through more than two years of suspension for competence failings that included failing to provide necessary care to a desaturating patient. She had repeatedly told the regulator she had left the profession altogether. The panel concluded that further suspension would serve no purpose and that she was unlikely ever to address the deficiencies. The case appears on MedicWatch’s independent record of regulator determinations, on the official HCPTS hearings site, and on MedicWatch’s suspensions list.
Background Information
Sudhakar worked as a physiotherapist, and the allegations against her spanned January to September 2019. They alleged inadequate clinical reasoning in her dealings with patients and, specifically, a failure on or around 28 August 2019 to provide the necessary level of care to Patient A, who was desaturating — her blood oxygen falling. The particulars included incorrect equipment setup, failures to recognise and respond to monitor alarms and the desaturation, and a failure to provide oxygen. The substantive panel heard the case over four days in October 2021 and found she had lacked adequate clinical reasoning and failed to provide the necessary care.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
A desaturating patient and failed oxygen response, then a regulator walked away from. The case was found as lack of competence; Particular 1(b) was not proved.
The substantive panel proved the inadequate-clinical-reasoning limb and the particulars covering the 28 August 2019 care of Patient A — the incorrect equipment setup, the missed alarms and desaturation, and the failure to provide oxygen — while finding one limb of the reasoning allegation not proved. It found lack of competence and current impairment and imposed a suspension. At the July 2022 review the panel found no evidence of insight or remediation, and because striking off was not yet legally available for a lack-of-competence case, extended the suspension for twelve months from 11 August 2022 with a review before expiry.
By the January 2024 review the picture had not changed: the panel noted she had repeatedly said she had changed career and would not return to physiotherapy, and that she had started but never completed a voluntary-removal application despite several offered opportunities and repeated helpful emails from the regulator — a pattern the panel called one of miscommunication. Finding no material change since October 2021, it concluded her fitness to practise remained impaired on both personal and public components, that the deficiencies were if anything likely to have increased with time out of practice, and ordered striking off.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The panel reasoned that members of the public would be extremely concerned to learn a physiotherapist had failed a desaturating patient and then taken no steps to address the deficiencies, and that a finding of no impairment would undermine confidence in the profession and its regulation. It also recorded its concern that extending suspension again risked the reasonable observer concluding the panel was not taking seriously the safety of the public, given her unwillingness to engage. Sudhakar appears on MedicWatch’s public suspensions list among removed practitioners.
Current Status
Sudhakar was struck off following the 12 January 2024 decision. The striking-off order and the underlying findings are published on the HCPTS hearings site and recorded on MedicWatch. She remains off the register; any future readmission would require her to demonstrate remediation of clinical-reasoning and emergency-response failings that panels found had worsened, not improved, with time.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Sudhakar has permanently lost her HCPC registration and the ability to practise as a physiotherapist in the United Kingdom. The erasure converted what the original panel treated as a remediable competence case into a permanent removal, not through further misconduct but through two years of disengagement and a stated decision never to return — while never completing the voluntary removal that would have formalised it. The determination remains permanently searchable on the official hearings site and on independent records such as MedicWatch.