The Professional Standards Authority’s annual review of Nursing and Midwifery Council found it has not met all fitness to practise standards.

The PSA’s annual performance review of the Nursing and Midwifery Council was undertaken to assess whether they are meeting the Standards of Good Regulation.  The most recent review covered the period between April 2018 and March 2019 and included a review of a sample of fitness to practise cases.

The NMC met 22 of the 24 Standards of Good Regulation but principally failing on fitness to practise standards.

These two Standards, relating to the transparency and fairness of its processes and keeping parties updated.

Transparency and fairness

PSA’s investigation found that it:

• is not yet in a position to consider the effectiveness of the work that the NMC has undertaken to address our concerns about its approach to complaints about PIP assessments and to improve decision-making at the early stage of its process
• concerned that the information provided by the NMC does not provide sufficient assurance that it understands why amendments to charges continue to be made with such frequency.

The PSA “continued to identify multiple instances of the NMC failing to obtain or present important and relevant evidence at final hearings.”  It admitted that whilst these concerns represented a small proportion of the NMC cases notified to us “they have significant implications for the fairness, transparency and focus on public protection of the process.”

The NMC failed to meet this standard last year.

Keeping parties updated

Whilst the NMC “continues to undertake extensive work to address the concerns”, the PSA audit nonetheless identified “some concerns around the way in which the NMC communicated with parties to cases and the support it provided to them.”

The PSA concluded that it had “not seen enough evidence that the NMC’s performance in this area improved during this review period sufficiently that we can be assured that this Standard is being met.”