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How can professional regulation encourage health and care practitioners to be more candid when care goes wrong?

A call for information

Responses required by Thursday 24 May 2018

It has been five years since the landmark Francis report which called for healthcare professionals to be more open and transparent with patients when things go wrong. At the time, the Authority was asked by the Secretary of State to review the progress of the nine regulators in embedding candour among their registrants. In 2014 we reported to the Secretary of State on their progress in the year after Francis.

Four years on from our advice to the Secretary of State, the issue of professionals being candid with patients is just as important and has been much in the news lately.

Are you interested in this issue? We would like to hear from you

In 2014, the regulators published their joint statement on the duty of candour. Four  years later, we want to find out what progress they have made by to embed candour among professionals. We also want to find out what more can be done to encourage professionals to be candid with patients.

We would like to hear from anyone with views on how any of the nine regulators we oversee could encourage the professionals they regulate to be more candid about mistakes they have made.

We welcome responses from organisations and individuals.

What we want to know

The questions we want your views on are:

  1. Do you think there has been a change in professionals’ attitudes to candour since 2014? (the regulators’ joint statement was published in 2014) If so, how?
  2. What barriers are there to professionals behaving candidly?
  3. How can professionals be influenced to behave candidly?
  4. What role do professional regulators have in encouraging candour among their registrants?
  5. Can professional regulators do more to encourage candour? If so, what?
  6. Are there any general comments, feedback, observations you wish to make?

Call for evidence – how to give us your views

We have already directly contacted a number of organisations. However, if we have not contacted you, you can give us views by filling in our questionnaire (link below). We encourage organisations to refer to any established statements they have already made on this subject.

We would like to be able to attribute responses to organisations in our report, where relevant. Please let us know if you do not want your response to be attributed. Responses from individuals will not be attributed, however we may mention their association to health or care (for example, if they are a professional or a patient).

We will to use the information gathered to inform a report we plan to publish later this year.

Please complete your response here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/LKSSF76

The deadline for responses is Thursday 24 May 2018.

If you have any queries about this project please email Policy@professionalstandards.org.uk.

At the end of the questionnaire, you will be able to tick a box to tell us your preferences on how you want your data used in our project.  

Find out more about the duty of candour including the reports and advice we have published since 2013.


All data is stored in line with the Data Protection Act 1998 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). If you want any more information on your rights regarding this, please email Suzanne Dodds at suzanne.dodds@professionalstandards.org.uk