After graduation she worked with children at Ilesha Wesley Guild hospital in
Oyo, Nigeria as a Methodist missionary. When the
Nigerian Civil War began in 1967, she left for Sierra Leone to work with the flying doctor service. She returned to the UK to study psychiatry at Queen Mary's Hospital, in
Carshalton, a hospital for long-term care of children in
Surrey. In 1969, she obtained a diploma in
psychological medicine, and in 1971 she completed a thesis on causes and prevalence of
lead poisoning in institutionalised children. She became a consultant psychiatrist at Botleys Park Hospital in
Chertsey, Surrey. In 1978, she was appointed to a task force modernising psychiatric care at
Normansfield Hospital. She introduced managing a hospital through a multidisciplinary team rather than, as was then customary, a
Medical Superintendent. Bicknell concentrated on humanising care of people with
intellectual disabilities. She took a position in bioethical hot spots years before others like the sterilization of minors with developmental disabilities in 1988, compared to the American Academy of Pediatrics for example in 1990. Her approach challenged the expectation that people were better not cared for in their own homes and meant that Bicknell was never part of the
medical establishment. ==Personal life==