Referee suggests six-month unsupervised visitation after clinician admits crossing boundary with patient

At a licensing hearing before the Department of Public Health, panel members heard testimony that a clinician, Diane Penland, crossed professional boundaries with a patient by responding to romantic, suggestive text messages and urged action on her license.

The panel discussed whether the respondent’s conduct warranted revocation, with a Department representative telling the panel that “the department is asking that the license be revoked.” A member of the hearing panel recommended placing Penland on six months of unsupervised visitation and erasing the record if no further reports of misconduct appear at the end of that period.

The matter centers on a short series of text-message exchanges that panel testimony described as “romantic and…