Standards and safety

In the UK, the work of conventional healthcare professionals, such as doctors, nurses, dentists and physiotherapists, is governed by the regulatory body for each profession. Most conventional healthcare practitioners must be registered with the regulatory body for their profession in order to work. To become registered, practitioners have to complete a suitable course of training and show that their work meets agreed standards. Regulatory bodies like these, which have been set up by Acts of Parliament, are called statutory regulatory bodies. In these pages, we use the phrase ‘regulated by law’ to mean statutorily regulated by an Act of Parliament.

A healthcare regulatory body should:

• Ensure that the practitioners are trained and practise to agreed minimum standards.
• Keep a list (a register) of practitioners who meet those standards.
• Have a code of ethics and behaviour to ensure that practitioners practise properly and professionally.
• Ensure that practitioners are insured to practise, so that you can be compensated if anything goes wrong with the treatment or if you have an accident on their premises.
• Ensure that practitioners take part in ongoing training and keep up-to-date with developments in their profession.
• Have a system for patients to make a complaint if they are unhappy with their treatment (complaints procedure).
• Have a system through which practitioners can be dealt with if their work is not satisfactory, which could include being taken off the register if they become unfit to practise (disciplinary procedure)

Osteopaths and chiropractors are regulated by law, like doctors and nurses. Acupuncturists and Western, Ayurvedic, Chinese and Tibetan herbal medicine practitioners are currently working towards statutory regulation. Other complementary healthcare professions are at different stages of developing voluntary systems of self-regulation.

A voluntary system of self-regulation can give patients most of the benefits that a statutory system provides, but it does not have the weight of the law behind it and practitioners do not have to register with the regulatory body. In fact, for a particular profession or therapy, there may be more than one association keeping lists of practitioners and they may all have different standards of training and practice.

Regulated or not, all healthcare practitioners have a legal duty of care towards their patients. This means that a practitioner has a duty not to harm patients and, if a patient does suffer harm due to a practitioner’s negligence, the practitioner can be sued in a court of law by the patient.

Osteopathy and Chiropractic

The General Osteopathic Council is the statutory regulatory body for osteopathy and has a register of all osteopaths in the UK. The General Chiropractic Council regulates chiropractors and has a register of all chiropractors in the UK. To get on the registers practitioners must meet particular standards of training and practice and only those on the registers are allowed to call themselves osteopaths and chiropractors.

The regulatory bodies have codes of ethics that govern how their practitioners work and practitioners must have insurance.  If there is a complaint against an osteopath or chiropracter, there is a set procedure for dealing with that complaint.  There are also disciplinary procedures to deal with practitioners whose work is not satisfactory. Ultimately, practitioners could be taken off the register, which means they could not legally practise as osteopaths or chiropractors.

see also:
Osteopathy
Chiropractic

Acupuncture and herbal medicine

Acupuncturists working within mainstream medicine are already regulated.  Non-medical acupuncturists are currently working towards voluntary regulation.

Practitioners from the Western, Ayurvedic, Chinese and Tibetan systems of herbal medicine have also been working together, through their professional associations and under the umbrella of the European Herbal and Traditional Medicine Practitioners Association to develop common standards of training and practice. In the UK, they represent approximately 2,000 practitioners through these professional member associations.

see also:
Acupuncture
Herbal Medicine

In addition to finishing their training satisfactorily, which gives them a qualification, practitioners should also be registered with a professional association or regulatory body, which should mean they have insurance and that there is a way for you to make a complaint, if you are not happy with your treatment.

Practitioners often use letters after their name to show their qualifications and/or which professional association or regulatory body they belong to or are registered with, for example, MBAcC means ‘Member of the British Acupuncture Council’ and MFHom means ‘Member of the Faculty of Homeopathy’. If you are not certain about what some letters mean, you can always ask the practitioner to explain.

Letters after the name of practitioners who are not statutorily regulated may not necessarily mean that their training or practice meet minimum standards. It is important that the practitioner has a qualification, is a current member of a professional organisation and has professional insurance. However, the level of qualifications and the length of training vary. For instance, there are some courses that are only suitable for personal interest, but are not suitable for people wishing to become practitioners.

You might not be able to tell this from the letters alone, so always ask the practitioner what their qualification is, how long their training was for and what association they are part of. You can check their membership by contacting that association. Some professional associations say they register practitioners but do not actually require the practitioners to show that they meet high standards.