02.07.13
NMC failing to meet regulation standards – PSA
The Professional Standards Authority (PSA) has published its 2012/13 performance review of nine regulators, showing that three do no meet one or more standards of good regulation.
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) and the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland (PSNI) are not meeting requirements to have a system of continuing fitness to practise in place, and the NMC is also failing to meet standards on registration.
The PSA is working to implement recommendations from the Mid Staffordshire review to devise procedures for dealing consistently with cases arising out of the same event but involving professionals regulated by more than one body.
Harry Cayton, chief executive of the PSA, said: “I am pleased to report that overall the regulators are performing well against the Standards of Good Regulation and are fulfilling their statutory responsibilities. However, not all regulators meet all the standards and in some cases this has implications for patient protection.”
Chief executive and registrar of the NMC, Jackie Smith said: “The performance review notes that we are not yet meeting the second standard of education and training, regarding revalidation. However, we have committed to rolling out a risk-based, efficient and economical system of revalidation by winter 2015. We now have a revalidation programme team in place; the governance of the programme has been established and proposals for revalidation will be presented to our Council in September 2013.
“We have resumed work on our ‘online registration’ programme which was paused last year due to financial constraints and we have undertaken a full review into our data security processes which have been internally and externally validated. We will also be training five Council members to undertake registration appeals, a substantial increase on the current position, and we will be making improvements to our customer service.
“As the PSA states we are only nine months into a two year improvement programme and 2013-2014 will bring new challenges and more progress towards our goal of becoming an efficient and effective regulator.”
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