Health Assessment and Monitoring

Sometimes, the quality of health care may suffer if a health practitioner is unwell. The Office of Health Practitioner Registration Boards has established the Health Assessment and Monitoring Program to deal with issues of practitioner health.

The role of the Program is to intervene with expert advice and experience to assist registrants to stay in the workforce wherever possible while ensuring protection of the public. With mutual agreement and cooperation, registrants and registration Boards work together as partners in rehabilitation.

The Health Practitioners (Professional Standards) Act 1999 outlines how a Board is to deal with a registrant where there is a "reasonable belief" the registrant suffers from some form of "impairment".

The Act defines impairment to mean "that the registrant has a physical or mental impairment, disability, condition or disorder that detrimentally affects, or is likely to affect, the registrant's physical or mental capacity to perform the registrant's profession and includes substance abuse or dependence".

More information on health assessment and monitoring is available here .

More information is available on;

• Requirements for supervised practice of impaired registrants 
• Alcohol breath-testing 
• Health assessment 
• Health assessment committees 
• Requests for information from treating practitioners 
• The urine drug screening program