By the time nurse practitioner Derrick Pickering left his six-year job in Utah Valley University’s student clinic, two patients had reported him to campus police: One alleged he touched her inappropriately, while a second said she felt he pressured her into having an unnecessary pelvic exam.
But those reports didn’t lead to any disciplinary action, according to an open records request to the university. The reason he left the job in February 2021 — revealed in a newly unsealed search warrant — is because campus administrators asked him to resign after he performed a pelvic examination after hours without a medical assistant present.
The university didn’t fire Pickering, however. And it doesn’t appear that university officials ever reported the nurse practitioner to licensing officials.
That meant his care went unscrutinized, and that his patients — and possibly future employers — were left unaware questions had been raised about it. And in the three years since he left UVU, he has twice more been accused of inappropriately touching patients — these times while conducting cosmetic procedures at Belle Medical’s Draper location.
Pickering was the subject of a February Salt Lake Tribune investigative report, which detailed how these four women went to police but officers were dismissive of the early disclosures, records show — either not fully investigating or telling the first three women they weren’t describing criminal misconduct.
The affidavit that supported the request for a search warrant, which was unsealed in March, is part of Draper police’s current investigation after a fourth woman reported Pickering.
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