Health practitioners who have had sexual misconduct findings made against them will now have permanent, public notes on their registration record.
AHPRA will now permanently display a finding of sexual misconduct alongside a practitioner’s registration, even in cases where the practitioner is no longer under sanctions.
Queensland, the host jurisdiction for the national laws which govern AHPRA, passed the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024 overnight.
Under the new legislation, the National Boards will be required to include additional information on the national register and the specialist register for health practitioners who have been found by a relevant tribunal to have engaged in sexual misconduct.
The finding will be recorded even in instances where the sexual misconduct was not in connection with that health practitioner’s work and where the sexual misconduct was not the sole or main basis for the tribunal’s decision.
The additional information to be displayed alongside registration will be a statement of the tribunal’s decision, the name of the tribunal, the fact that the tribunal decided the practitioner behaved in a way that constitutes professional misconduct and that the professional misconduct involved sexual misconduct, as well as the sanctions imposed by the tribunal.
A link to the tribunal decision will also feature.
Right now, any conditions or undertakings that put a limit on the way a registered health practitioner can work are only visible to the public while active. Once the relevant Board decides that a restriction is no longer needed for a particular practitioner, the note disappears from their registration.
This will continue to be the process for conditions and undertakings where there is no finding of sexual misconduct.
Sexual misconduct findings, however, will now be permanent. Registration notes on sexual misconduct will only be removed if the tribunal decision is overturned or modified.
Related
The same piece of legislation also bars non-disclosure agreements from preventing or limiting a person from making a health service complaint or a notification in good faith and strengthened protections for people who make complaints.
It will now be an offence to threaten, intimidate, dismiss or otherwise try to exact revenge on a notifier.
The other change is that practitioners who have their registration cancelled will now have to obtain a reinstatement order from a responsible tribunal before applying to the Board for re-registration.
Acting AHPRA CEO Kym Ayscough said the new legislation was a milestone in patient protection.
“Everybody has the right to expect their practitioner to be safe and fit to practise, and these reforms strengthen that right,” she said.
