IPEM responds to regulating healthcare professionals consultation

A RESPONSE to a consultation about regulating healthcare professionals and protecting the public has been submitted by IPEM.

The Department of Health and Social Care launched the consultation on proposals to reform the regulation of healthcare professionals earlier this year, covering four areas: Governance and Operating Frame; Education and Training; Registration; and Fitness to practise.

IPEM’s Professional and Standards Council (PSC) produced the response to the 70-question consultation. This built on the Department’s original consultation on the issue four years ago, ‘Promoting professionalism, reforming regulation’, which IPEM also responded to at the time.

In the response to the latest consultation, IPEM highlighted its desire to see the introduction of statutory registration for clinical technologists, who are currently part of a voluntary register but have been lobbying to be regulated for around 20 years.

The response also made the following points:

• Regulators should be under a duty to cooperate with each other for patient safety reasons, they should be transparent and they should assess the impact of any proposed changes to their rules on patients.
• All regulators should have the power to approve, refuse, re-approve and withdraw approval of education and training providers, qualifications, courses or programmes of training which lead to registration or annotation of the register.
• Regulators should retain all existing approval and standard setting powers providing it is completed in consultation with the profession. Regulators should set standards, the ‘providers of training’ should set the exams/assessment to the standard set by the regulator.
• Regulators should hold a single register which can be divided into parts for each profession they regulate.
• IPEM agreed with all the fitness to practice proposals and appeals processes being put forward as they are consistent with what the Health and Care Professions Council already does.

Professor Stephen O'Connor, IPEM's President, said: 'This was an important consultation for IPEM to respond to and I am grateful to members of the PSC for providing such a detailed response to it. Once again it has given IPEM the opportunity to highlight our wish to see the introduction of statutory registration for clinical technologists