“The High Court decision to dismiss the appeal and not erase Dr Hughes is deeply disappointing” – Patient A
16:00, 27 May 2026
Dr Cian Hughes and the girl known as ‘Patient A’. Dr Hughes was suspended by a Medical Practitioners Tribunal for a year for an inappropriate relationship with Patient A, who he met when she was a 13-year-old patient at Bristol’s Children’s Hospital(Image: Bristol Post submitted)
A woman who was groomed as a teenager into starting a sexual relationship with a doctor – who met her when she was a patient at Bristol’s Children’s Hospital – has said a High Court decision not to strike him off the register was ‘deeply disappointing’.
Dr Cian Hughes was only suspended as a doctor for a year by a medical tribunal panel last year, after admitting he had committed misconduct by his relationship with the teenager, known as Patient A. They first met when she was just 13 and a patient at Bristol Children’s Hospital.
The decision not to strike him off was seen as so lenient by the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care that they took both the General Medical Council and Hughes to the High Court, in a bid to overturn the sentence and have the Irish doctor ‘erased’ from the medical register.
The woman, who is now in her late twenties and has been known throughout the legal process as Patient A, said the decision by High Court judge Mr Justice Murray to uphold the decision by a medical tribunal panel to only suspend Hughes for a year, despite admitting that he had committed misconduct, showed that the guidelines for tribunals to sanction doctors had not kept pace with GMC zero-tolerance policies for medical staff who have relationships with patients.
Last year, a tribunal heard how Dr Hughes was a student doctor involved in the care of Patient A, who was just 13, at the Children’s Hospital in Bristol back in 2011. The pair developed a friendship which evolved into a relationship when Patient A was 16 and 17, and then a sexual one as soon as she turned 18.
Police investigated but decided not to charge Hughes, and handed over their files to the GMC, which eventually instigated disciplinary proceedings against him.
By that point, Dr Hughes was working as one of the leading medical professionals developing Google medical arm of artificial intelligence in Dublin. But after his licence was suspended for a year, in October last year he took up a new role as Chief Scientific Officer at Counsel Health, an online AI medical service.
David Hopkins, on behalf of the Professional Standards Authority, told the High Court the tribunal had been wrong to conclude that Hughes had not ‘exploited Patient A’s vulnerability’, and therefore should have erased him from the GMC doctors’ record.
Dr Cian Hughes and the girl known as ‘Patient A’. Dr Hughes was suspended by a Medical Practitioners Tribunal for a year for an inappropriate relationship with Patient A, who he met when she was a 13-year-old patient at Bristol’s Children’s Hospital(Image: Bristol Post submitted)
But, in dismissing the Professional Standards Authority’s appeal, Mr Justice Murray said the tribunal had been acting within the guidelines for sanctions of a doctor in what was a ‘complicated’ and ‘nuanced’ case.
“In a case involving a vulnerable patient, (the guidelines state) ‘erasure … is likely to be appropriate’,” the judge said. “This clearly leaves room for there to be cases involving a vulnerable patient where erasure is not appropriate.
“In any event, the Tribunal acknowledged that this is a case that came close to requiring erasure, despite the lack of a finding of predatory behaviour and despite the mitigating factors,” he added.
“I am unpersuaded that the Tribunal reached the wrong conclusion on the question of whether Dr Hughes had exploited Patient A’s vulnerability and for that reason was wrong to impose the sanction of suspension for 12 months rather than the sanction of erasure,” he concluded.
Patient A, who was denied the opportunity to give evidence directly to the tribunal, despite wanting to, said the latest High Court decision in the case was ‘tone deaf and out of step with wider healthcare’.
“The High Court decision to dismiss the PSA appeal and not erase Dr Hughes is deeply disappointing,” she told Bristol Live.
“Particularly in the context of the GMC’s zero tolerance policy on sexual misconduct, especially with children. Mr Justice Murray’s decision that a 12 month suspension wasn’t lenient is partly because the MPTS sanctions guidance doesn’t mandate erasure for sexual misconduct with minors, despite recognising they are inherently vulnerable due to age.
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“As the victim in this case, the judgement feels rather tone deaf and out of step with wider healthcare, justice and government policies and approaches to VAWG. Nevertheless, this does not take away the judgement by the tribunal and the High Court that Dr Hughes’ conduct towards me was wrong for many reasons,” she added.
“Despite repeated failings of the system, I’m still hopeful that the appropriate sanction to protect the public and the reputation of the profession, of erasure, will be given by the panel at the MPTS review hearing on June 18,” she added.