No more excuses: tackling inequalities in health and care professional regulation

Continuing the conversation: write-ups of recent events

The role of health professionals in tackling health inequalities: 14 December 2023

In Safer care for all, we looked at the impact of inequalities on patients, service users and registrants, and on public confidence more widely. We also took a closer look at what professional regulation (and beyond) could do to tackle inequalities in health and care. More than 90 participants joined us online to explore whether health and care professionals in the UK should have an explicit responsibility in supporting action to address these disparities as they do in other countries. And, if so, whether regulators need to reinforce such a role through their training, standards and guidance.

The event was attended by colleagues from the NHS, patient organisations, professional bodies, regulators and employer bodies.

With an early start to ensure that delegates could listen to speakers from the Medical Council of New Zealand (where it was much later on in the day) on the Council’s experience of embedding cultural safety for medical professionals in New Zealand, the event heard from a range of excellent speakers also including the NHS Race and Health Observatory, Healthwatch England to talk about the impact of health inequalities on patients and service users, the NHS Confederation on their five-step plan for NHS Trusts in tackling health inequalities, The Health and Care Professions Council on how they have sought to embed EDI considerations into their standards for registrants and the Royal College of Midwives on their work to decolonise midwifery education and training.    

The event was well attended with about 90 participants, including colleagues from the NHS, patient organisations, professional bodies, regulators and employer bodies to discuss how to tackle health inequities and consider what further actions should be taken. As well as the presentations there was some excellent discussions looking at the balance between carrot and stick in encouraging a more active role by healthcare professionals in tackling health inequalities, the importance of education and training in embedding expectations, the need for strong leadership by all organisations, the importance of listening closely to what patients and service users are telling us and the value of unity in tackling shared problems.

We are also hoping to interview Joan Simeon from the Medical Council of New Zealand and will provide more details on our social media channels.

• Why are black women four times more likely than white women to die in childbirth in the UK?
• Why have four of the most recent major patient safety scandals primarily affected women?
• Why are black and ethnic minoritised doctors overrepresented in all stages of the fitness to practise process?

These are just some of the stark statistics taken from the first chapter of our report Safer care for all where we look at the impact of inequalities on patients, service users and registrants, and on public confidence more widely. As part of this chapter, we also taker a closer look at what professional regulation (and beyond) can do to tackle inequalities affecting registrants and patients and service users.

Barriers to complaints: 23 January 2024

We started the new year off with our joint online seminar on tackling barriers to complaints with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO). The event followed on the heels of an earlier in-person event with patient and service-user organisations held in Edinburgh in September 2023. 

The event brought together over 100 stakeholders from across the health and social care sector to discuss and explore the barriers that currently existing and can prevent patients and service uses from complaining. Along with our PHSO colleagues we wanted to share examples of innovative actions to widen and improve access to complaints services and to encourage and promote further joint work to tackle barriers to complaining. The event gave us much food for thought and we will look to continue this work in 2024/25. You can find out more about the event here.

The event included speakers from National Voices and Healthwatch England who set the scene about the context for understanding the patient experience of making complaints and what patients want from complaints systems in the future. Attendees then went into themed breakout sessions to discuss particular types of barriers to complaining and possible short, medium and long term actions which could help to improve the experience of making complaints as well as the use complaints information is put to within the system to promote learning and improvement.

There were strong themes linking to the previous event looking at addressing health inequalities – it was clear that it isn’t possible to effectively address differential experiences in people’s access to and quality of care unless we know the problems they are encountering. Also, although the complaints system is complex and there are differences across organisations, there are clearly many shared barriers which could be tackle through collaborative action.   

Overall, it was a lively and useful event which has given us a lot to think about in terms of further action the PSA takes forward in this area during 2024/25 in line with our commitments in Safer care for all.