Press Round-Up: Regulatory and Professional Discipline – December 2021 – January 2022

General Chiropractic Council (GCC)

The GCC has launched its new Social Media and Messaging toolkit, designed to help Registrants remain GCC and Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) compliant, along with good practice guidance when using these popular apps and tools.

The toolkit, together with the GCC Advertising toolkit, will help Registrants avoid some of the more common issues that have arisen when promoting or advertising their business/services, some of which have led to Fitness to Practise complaints and investigations.

The guidance and toolkit can be found here.

Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors (RICS)

RICS has produced a video to outline how technology is connecting homebuyers and built environment professionals.

The regulator states that tech and data marketplaces can bring benefits to consumers and surveyors to manage and deliver services more efficiently.

The tech partners discussion with RelAi, a Bitcoin investment app, can be viewed here.

General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC)

The GPhC has issued a statement of thanks to the 4,799 provisionally registered pharmacists who opened their doors in 2020 to provide patient care and support NHS services during the pandemic.

Provisional registration was introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected the ability of trainees completing the pharmacist pre-registration scheme in 2020 to finish their training as planned, and to sit the registration assessment as originally scheduled. The register enabled people who had completed their training to support NHS services and provide patient care effectively as provisionally-registered pharmacists, while they waited to sit the registration assessment. 

The provisional register closed on 31 January 2022, as provisionally-registered pharmacists have now had three potential opportunities to sit the registration assessment – in March, July and November 2021. Anyone still on the provisional register must have joined the main register by 1 February, otherwise they cannot work as a pharmacist after this date.  

The GPhC is urging employers to check that any provisionally registered trainees that they employ have applied for full registration and encourage those who have not, to do so straight away.

Chief Executive of the GPhC, Duncan Rudkin, said: 

“As the provisional register closes, we would like to thank all those involved in helping pre-registration trainees and provisionally-registered pharmacists to meet the considerable challenges of completing their training and sitting the registration assessment during the pandemic." 

“We are grateful to professional leadership and representative bodies, education and training organisations and employers, for everything they have done to support provisionally-registered pharmacists and help them provide safe and effective care to patients. And we particularly want to acknowledge the considerable contribution to health services that provisionally-registered pharmacists have made during this time.”

General Osteopathic Council (GOsC)

The Court of Appeal has published its judgment in the case of GOsC v Wray, a case appealed by the GOsC following a High Court judgment made in December 2020.

The High Court judgment at the end of 2020 followed a Professional Conduct Committee (PCC) outcome that was subsequently appealed by the Registrant. The GOsC appealed the case following this High Court judgment because, if unchallenged, it had the potential to limit the way in which a PCC hears evidence in cases and would change the way regulators approach registrants who have been ‘conditionally discharged’ by the criminal courts.

The GOsC made clear that these were important points of general principle that it was obliged to seek correction of because due to its remit to act in the public interest. Leave was granted by the Court of Appeal for this argument to take place on the basis that the apparent errors of the High Court raised points of wider public interest.

The Court of Appeal has agreed with the substance of the GOsC arguments that the High Court had been wrong to criticise the way in which the PCC heard the case. Their Lordships underlined the importance of PCC panels seeking information through questioning and set out that the procedure followed by the PCC had not in any way been irregular or unfair to the Registrant.

However, overall, the GOsC is deemed to have lost the appeal. This is because the Court of Appeal concluded that the High Court, notwithstanding its errors, had been entitled to form its own view of the conduct that had been admitted by the Registrant, and to overturn the PCC’s finding that he was guilty of unacceptable professional conduct.

Matthew Redford, Chief Executive and Registrar said: 'We have reviewed and reflected on the Court of Appeal judgment and we thank their Lordships for the confirmation that the substance of our appeal was correct, although the High Court judgment was not overturned'.

'The judgment will allow our Professional Conduct Committees to proceed with similar cases in the knowledge that their procedures are correct and that panels are entitled to ask appropriate questions to all parties to a case in order to ensure public protection is maintained'.

Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC)

The NMC published its Workforce Race Equality Standard and pay gap reports on 17 December 2021. This followed a commitment by the NMC in 2019 to sign up to the NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES), following which two founds of data (October 2020 and May 2021) were published.

Some of the key findings included:

Workforce Race Equality Standard

• In 2020 only 5.2 percent of employees thought the NMC provided equal career progression and promotion opportunities. This has significantly jumped in 2021 to 35.3 percent, which represents a 30.1 percent point increase. 
• More than 39 percent of NMC colleagues are from BME backgrounds, over 19 percentage points higher than the average among the NHS trusts and other arms-length bodies included in the 2021 WRES survey.
• 11.9 percent of BME respondents said they had experienced discrimination, and 7.8 percent of white respondents. This is an increase from the 2020 submission where 9.2 percent of BME respondents, and 5.3 percent of white respondents said they had experienced discrimination at work.

Ethnicity pay gap report

• The mean ethnicity pay gap has decreased from 28.7 percent in 2020 to 23.7 percent in 2021. The ethnicity pay gap is said to reflect the under-representation of BME staff in senior roles.

Andrea Sutcliffe CBE, Chief Executive and Registrar for the NMC, said:

‘We’re committed to creating the inclusive, positive working environments our colleagues need to give their best. That’s why I’m glad more of our colleagues feel confident about equal career opportunities at the NMC than they did last year.

We’ve also made small progress in some areas of our pay gaps. For example, our mean ethnicity pay gap has decreased slightly. But it’s still much too big, and we’re disappointed to see our mean gender pay gap has increased.

We know we’ve still got a long way to go to address career progression, and the issues highlighted in our pay gap reports. We’ll get there by working with our colleagues to become a role model for equality’.

Combined update

Several regulators of UK health and social care professionals have reiterated their support for staff working together to tackle the on-going pandemic and seasonal pressure on services. A joint statement has been agreed by the following regulators and is produced below:

• General Chiropractic Council
• General Dental Council
• General Medical Council 
• General Optical Council
• General Osteopathic Council
• General Pharmaceutical Council
• Health and Care Professions Council
• Nursing and Midwifery Council
• Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland
• Social Work England.

‘We know that registrants will be making difficult decisions around care provision in very challenging circumstances; that context is understood and will be considered by regulators.

We hold the registers of health and social care professionals in the UK. We support those professionals to deliver better, safer care by setting the standards they need to meet, to act in the best interests of patients and people who use health and social care services at all times.

As registered professionals, the first concern of the individuals on our registers will be the care of their patients and people who use health and social care services. We encourage health and social care professionals, working in partnership with each other and people using services, to use their professional judgement to assess risk and to deliver safe care informed by any relevant guidance and the values and principles set out in their professional standards.

We recognise that in highly challenging circumstances, professionals may need to depart from established procedures in order to care for patients and people using health and social care services. Our regulatory standards are designed to be flexible and to provide a framework for decision-making in a wide range of situations. 

They support professionals by highlighting the key principles which should be followed, including the need to work cooperatively with colleagues to keep people safe, to practise in line with the law and the best available evidence, to recognise and work within the limits of their competence, and to have appropriate indemnity arrangements relevant to their practice.

We recognise that the individuals on our registers may feel anxious about how context is taken into account when concerns are raised about their decisions and actions in very challenging circumstances. Where a concern is raised about a registered professional, it will always be considered on the specific facts of the case, taking into account the factors relevant to the environment in which the professional is working. We would also take account of any relevant information about resource, guidelines or protocols in place at the time.

We will continue to issue profession specific guidance to our registrants to provide additional support where that is needed.’