10 December 2021

Responding to fitness to practice issues

FODO - The Association for Eye Care Providers - has always supported registrants with GOC complaints and fitness to practise issues. Our highly experienced in-house team works in partnership with Berrymans Lace Mawer LLP (and other top legal defence teams) to help members understand and respond to the GOC on a wide range of issues, including member defence.

The good news is that most GOC issues are readily dealt with, and we have an excellent record of doing just that with high member satisfaction. We find the most complicated issue with most complaints is helping registrants unlearn their fear of the GOC.

There is no reason to fear a healthcare regulator and that is certainly not the purpose of regulation. However, it is clear that many GOC registrants do. This is a real problem and is in part due to students not being taught enough about the GOC's role, legal defence marketing that has historically used fear to attract customers, and publication bias which means registrants read about the rare high-profile cases but not all the cases that are resolved early on and never progress to FtP.

That is why we focus on helping members unlearn their fear of the GOC and look at complaints as an opportunity to reflect on and learn from an event. We also provide context early on about similar cases and the likely outcomes. Doing this helps everybody involved and, perhaps most importantly, supports registrants' mental wellbeing through the entire process.

The vital thing to remember is that it is a privilege to be part of a regulated healthcare profession, and over a long career, most clinicians are likely to have a complaint made about something. In most cases, it will be readily resolved by taking a proactive approach and analysing and reflecting on the substance of the issues raised and correcting them. For our part, we are always there for members, seven days a week when they need it. We never use fear to promote our legal defence support and will do more in the years ahead to help people unlearn their fears of regulators.

Alan Tinger is the FODO Director of Regulatory Affairs.

This blog was originally published in the GOC's A focus on Fitness to Practise.