Health professionals who’ve lived through the system are helping transform how AHPRA handles notifications, putting wellbeing at the centre of regulation.
Practitioners who’ve experienced the stress of complaints firsthand are helping drive major reforms to Australia’s health regulation system.
The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency and the National Boards have enlisted practitioners with lived experience of the notifications process to help reshape how complaints are handled, following research that revealed the toll regulatory investigations could take on practitioners’ wellbeing.
An Expert Advisory Group (EAG), established by AHPRA in 2021, was tasked with identifying where the process could be improved and how distress could be reduced.
Its landmark 2023 report outlined four key priorities: managing practitioner health concerns, improving openness and transparency, providing better support, and learning from practitioner feedback.
All recommendations were accepted by AHPRA and the National Boards. This week they released a progress report outlining the actions to date.
“At the end of October 2025, 13 actions [out of 33] had been completed,” the report said.
“The biggest area of progress has been in the way we manage notifications about a practitioner’s health.
“Four recommendations have been completed: three about how we manage health concerns and one about encouraging peer support for practitioners. Five single actions have also been completed.
“These are about addressing myths and misinformation about notifications; changing how we recruit regulatory advisors to improve negotiation and conflict resolution skills; how we partner with others in the health sector to increase support for practitioners; how we support the reform work underway on a culturally safe notifications process for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners and notifiers; and our continuing engagement in research that deepens our understanding of the impact of our work on practitioners and notifiers.”
AHPRA CEO Justin Untersteiner said the reforms aimed to create a process that was mindful of the practitioners’ experiences when they become the target of a notification.
“We want to minimise the distress that someone feels when they’re going through the notification process,” he said.
“Because we know that safe practice starts with practitioner wellbeing,” he said.
Practitioner and EAG member Amanda Haimes said contributing to the reforms had been one of the most meaningful experiences of her career.
“Our work is about change; change that means future practitioners won’t have to carry the same fear, shame or pain that we did,” she said.
“If our work with the EAG makes that a reality, then it’s all been worth it, and I can’t think of a more worthy cause.
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“I’m deeply proud of what we’ve achieved and in awe of my colleagues’ commitment to protecting the public and the wellbeing of our profession.”
The report revealed “substantial progress has been made with the actions that are not yet complete”, including “how to review, respond to and learn from serious incidents of significant distress involving a practitioner, notifier or witness who has been involved in a regulatory process within the past 12 months [Recommendation 14]”.
“We are also partway through a significant piece of research about how to identify and address the challenges of isolation and insufficient support systems for regional, remote and overseas-trained practitioners [Recommendation 12a].
“This research has already involved interviews with more than 20 practitioners from these cohorts with recent experience of our processes; we expect to report publicly on that work in early 2026.
“There is more to do, and this work will continue. This is only an interim report. Sustained thorough change takes time, even though we have a sense of urgency about the need to achieve it. We will provide further updates as we progress.”
Dr Anna Van der Gaag, Visiting Professor in Ethics and Regulation at the University of Surrey and a member of the EAG, welcomed the latest progress report.
“It shows that AHPRA and the National Boards are making real progress towards faster, better and more compassionate regulatory actions,” Dr Van der Gaag said.
“This is good for patients and good for health practitioners. The work of understanding our data, combined with listening to those with lived experience, is having an impact. “We need to have both as part of our ‘business as usual’ if progress is to continue in this positive direction. This work is not yet finished, but this report shows that AHPRA is well on the way.”
Read the full progress report here.
