EDINBURGH — A paediatric emergency doctor lost his license to practice medicine this week after a tribunal exposed his predatory communications with a teenage boy. Dr. Thomas O’Neill, 37, from Edinburgh, targeted the 15-year-old between November 2019 and May 2020, according to court records from his February 2024 conviction at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.

O’Neill worked in the A&E department at the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People, known locally as Sick Kids Hospital. He met the boy, then 14, through a colleague. Court papers detail how O’Neill, aged 31 at the time, began by asking about the boy’s masturbation habits while driving with him as a passenger in November 2019.

The contact escalated quickly. O’Neill messaged the boy on WhatsApp with inappropriate questions, then sent pictures of his penis via Snapchat. He told the minor he was buying sex toys and later showed up at the boy’s house to deliver a silicone device, tribunal evidence showed.

After the boy blocked him, O’Neill persisted. He created accounts with male and female usernames on other platforms to reach out. In one exchange, using a male name, he asked the boy, ‘Are you gay?’ He followed up by sending another penis image and asking if the boy recognised the genitals.

Sentenced in March 2024, O’Neill avoided prison. Instead, he received a community payback order and 18 months of supervision, plus sex offender registration requirements, officials said.

The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing on Thursday laid bare these details. Tribunal chair Lee Davies ruled erasure from the register necessary. ‘Dr O’Neill’s actions of sending explicit images and messages to a child undermines patients’ and the public’s trust and confidence in the medical profession,’ Davies stated. He added that O’Neill showed no insight into his behaviour’s seriousness or attempts to remediate it.

‘The interests of Dr O’Neill are outweighed by the need to protect the public, including the need to maintain the reputation of the profession,’ Davies concluded.

O’Neill graduated from the University of Brighton and University of Sussex in 2013. He registered with the General Medical Council in 2014. Besides Sick Kids, he served as a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh.

YouTube videos once showed him supporting LGBT staff at the university. Edinburgh University removed all such clips after media inquiries. The university declined to comment.

NHS Lothian confirmed O’Neill is no longer employed there. Tom Power, director of people and culture, said: ‘While we do not comment on individual members of staff or former staff, we expect all our staff to uphold the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and patient care, and take necessary and appropriate steps where this is not the case.’

The tribunal’s decision bars O’Neill from medicine indefinitely. No evidence linked his actions to hospital patients, but the case has drawn sharp scrutiny to safeguarding in paediatric settings.