Optics leads the way on fitness to practise

Other healthcare professions could soon be looking to optics as a beacon of best practice when it comes to professional regulation.

The prospect emerged with the publication last Friday of the Foster review into the regulation of ‘non-medical’ healthcare professionals.

The report was published in tandem with a review of medical regulation entitled Good doctors, safer patients, which was prompted by the Shipman inquiry.

Both reports recommend tougher standards for registration and regulation of healthcare professionals and continual ‘revalidation’ of practitioners to ensure they remain fit to practise throughout their careers.

The Foster review notes the recommendation in Good doctors, safer patients that undergraduate medical students be registered with the General Medical Council and adds: ‘Registration of students has been recently introduced for social workers and for opticians.

We need to understand what the regulatory costs and benefits of spreading it wider would be and intend to study these to reach a decision about whether it should be extended to other groups in addition to medical students.’

Optical bodies have also been at the forefront of promoting CET for health practitioners.

Kate Fielding, communications manager for the General Optical Council (GOC), commented: ‘We were the first regulator to introduce student registration.

There are certainly some areas in the recommendations where we would appear to be ahead of the game and to have introduced some measures already. It’s an endorsement of some of the work we’ve done to modernise the framework for optical regulation.’

The GOC welcomed the publication of the Foster review. The Council said it had been highlighting opportunities to improve patient protection through more co-ordination and consistency between healthcare regulators, employers and other players in the UK healthcare system.

Registrar Peter Coe said: ‘I am very pleased that the review’s findings will now be available for discussion and debate. We haven’t had a chance to look in detail at the recommendations.

Clearly that is something we will be doing over the coming weeks.’
The recommendations have now gone out for further consultation, with responses due in by November 10.