A former paediatric doctor in Edinburgh has been permanently removed from the medical profession after a tribunal found his conduct toward a teenage boy he encountered through work fundamentally incompatible with medical practice.
Thomas O’Neill, 37, was struck off the medical register after the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service reviewed his conviction for indecent communications involving a 15-year-old child. The tribunal heard he repeatedly contacted the teenager through WhatsApp, Snapchat and phone calls over several months, sending explicit material and attempting to continue contact even after being blocked.
The misconduct occurred between late 2019 and mid-2020 while O’Neill was employed in the emergency department at Royal Hospital for Children and Young People, formerly known as Edinburgh Sick Kids Hospital.
Evidence presented to the tribunal showed he first engaged the boy in sexually inappropriate conversation before later sending explicit images and discussing sexual items, including delivering a silicone device to the teenager’s home. The hearing was told he later created alternative online identities, including female aliases, to continue contacting the child after communication had been cut off.
O’Neill had already been convicted at Edinburgh Sheriff Court in 2025 and received a community-based sentence with supervision, while also being placed under sex offender notification requirements. Tribunal chair Lee Davies said the behaviour severely damaged public confidence in the profession and demonstrated a serious failure to meet professional standards. The panel concluded that his continued registration posed an unacceptable risk to public trust and ordered his name be struck off.
