AAPE – Initial Comment

See the New White Paper

Trust Assurance and Safety – The Regulation of Health Professionals in the 21st Century (the White Paper setting out the Government’s plans to reform Professional Regulation) and analysis

INITIAL SUMMARY AND REVIEW FROM:
Katrina Maclaine
Nurse Practitioner Adviser
Professional Nursing Department
Royal College of Nursing

The White Paper is out – “Trust, Assurance and Safety – The Regulation of Health cialis tablets Professionals in the 21st Century” and this sets out the Governments plans to reform Professional Regulation.

This includes the Governments plans for Medical and Non Medical regulation and a lot of the content focuses on addressing issues with Doctors and the objectiveness of the GMC.

You can access the full version or executive summary from the Dept Health website www.dh.gov.uk
OR DOWNLOAD THE PDF FILE FROM THE DOCUMENTS AND PUBLICATIONS PAGE

Key points at this time are :

ADVANCED NURSE PRACTITIONER REGULATION
The Department of Health will discuss with the NMC their outcome of their consultation on advanced nursing practice to agree next steps
The Department of Health will ask the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE), whose remit it to oversee all of the work of the regulatory bodies, to work with regulators, the professions and those working on European and International standards to support work to develop standards for higher levels of practice – particularly advanced practice in nursing, AHPs and Healthcare scientists
They recognise that there is a sliding scale of risk and that regulation and revalidation processes should reflect this
There is a clear steer that there should be increased employer responsibility for revalidation
For non medical health professions, post registration qualifications should be recorded in the register where these are relevant to the patient care, risk management and are at a level substantially beyond the requirements for basic registration
REGULATION OF NEW ROLES eg Surgical Care Practitioner, Anaesthetic Practitioner, Critical Care Practitioner, Emergency Care Practitioner, Medical Care Practitioner – The lack of support for regulation of these new roles is very evident. It appropriately highlights the need for evidence to justify demand for separate regulation as it states that “The nature of the work undertaken in these roles and levels at which it is undertaken are identical to that done by existing regulated professionals”
The WP does say a working party will consider this further in relation to suggested criteria and a key one from our perspective here is “whether a new role is sufficiently different from others to be regulated as a profession in its own right”