Health Professional Regulation in Australia

Abstract

As 2020 has progressed jurisdictions across the world and especially their health systems have been grappling with the enormous challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic eventually subsides national and international systems of health regulation are sure to be evaluated strenuously and how health professionals are regulated will be important in these review processes. This paper discusses pre-pandemic regulatory and professional modalities of three distinct groups of health professionals in Australia: doctors; nurses and health service managers. The paper outlines the amalgam of regulatory and professional structures and actors that influence how these three professions practice and deliver health services, before reporting the results of a small qualitative study of the three groups. The study involved 19 semi-structured interviews with doctors, nurses, and health service managers to determine how they interpreted, understood, evaluated and operationalised the requirements of being a health professional, and the emphasis that they gave to professional and regulatory codes of conduct. The study provides a bottom-up perspective of how the core elements of professionalism are perceived by representatives of these groups and in turn, to offer insight into the priority that these groups give to professional association and regulatory codes of conduct. The study also included 2 additional interviews with senior personnel from the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, the meta regulator of health professionals in Australia regarding the issues raised by health professionals in the study.