PSA Standards Review - Call for Evidence

Alongside the Professional Standards Authority’s public consultation on the Standards of Good Regulation and Standards for Accredited Registers we are launching a call for evidence.  

The aim of this call for evidence is to gather any published research, data or other written evidence which suggests ways professional regulation and registration could improve. This evidence, along with the responses to the public consultation, will feed into our Standards review, and may inform further work by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA). 

We, like many others in the sector, want to play our part in encouraging a shift by professional regulators and registers towards a more preventative approach to regulation, creating conditions in which care is better and safer, and harm less likely to occur. We would like to use our revised Standards to help support this shift in approach across our sector.  

The balance between preventative and reactive approaches in professional regulation and registration tends towards reactive – in particular through dealing with concerns about professionals through ‘fitness to practise’, after harm has already occurred. The preventative functions of education, registration, standards and continuing fitness to practise have arguably not received as much attention from a policy and legislative perspective. 

Our review of the Standards of Good Regulation and Standards for Accredited Registers is an opportune time to consider ways that could encourage a refocused approach. 

What do we want to know about? 

We would like to understand more about how different regulatory approaches might affect how a health or care professional behaves, in both positive and negative ways. As part of our Standards review, we will be considering in detail, function by function, how professional regulation can support registrants to deliver safe and effective care and minimise the unintended consequences of regulation. This will also involve looking at how regulators quality assure the training that is required to be on a professional register, and how this can affect the delivery of this training in both positive and negative ways. 

We want to know of any published materials, from the UK and elsewhere, on or relevant to professional regulation and registration which may help us to: 

• Identify any unintended consequences of regulation on registrants’ behaviour that could undermine the safety and quality of care, and how these could be avoided or mitigated
• Identify how regulation and registration can support positive behaviours in its registrant group to help deliver safe and effective care
• Identify any unintended consequences of the quality assurance approaches by regulators and registers of approved training for professionals that could undermine the quality of training, and how these could be avoided or mitigated
• Identify ways in which quality assurance approaches by regulators of approved training for professionals could be more effective
• Generally consider how professional regulation and registration could do more to prevent harm and improve care. 

We have included some examples of evidence below under the four key regulatory functions. 

If you are aware of any such published materials, it would be helpful if you could use the response form to provide a link or reference, and any accompanying commentary you would like to include. We will then consider this alongside the evidence we have identified, when looking in more detail at the changes we would like to make to the Standards.