Harmonising sanctions in fitness to practise cases

Background

The sanctions available to the nine healthcare regulators as part of their fitness to practise procedures are central to their roles in protecting the public and in safeguarding the standards of the professions that they regulate. Each of the regulators was established with its own legal framework and its own set of sanctions.

The Professional Standards Authority (then CHRE) has explored the possibility of increasing the level of consistency between the sanctions available for the regulation of the various healthcare professions through a consultation with interested parties.

The aim of the consultation was for the the Authority to gauge support for the principle of harmonisation of sanctions, and to identify the range of sanctions that should be available when fitness to practise has been found to be impaired.  

Summary

This report proposed a common range of sanctions that should be available to all fitness to practise panels across all regulatory bodies. Each regulator was initially established with its own sanction set, but greater harmonisation would be a positive development, as would using a common set of terms to describe each type of sanction. Documents about this project include:

• Analysis of the consultation responses (September 2008)

• The position of the Authority (September 2008)

• The Authority's view on common terms (November 2009)