Commitment 2: We’ll seek to build an accurate picture about the nurse, midwife or nursing associate’s practising history

We'll always seek to build up, take account of and present an accurate picture of someone's practising history, rather than viewing an incident or concerns in a vacuum. A person-centred approach means looking at things that have gone well, not just the period of time when a concern has arisen.

Before deciding on someone's fitness to practise, it would be helpful to know if they'd encountered a similar situation before, knew the right thing to do and would usually do it. This could tell us if the incident we're looking at is out of character, part of a pattern or because of a gap in their knowledge or training.

Where our information shows what the nurse, midwife or nursing associate did was out of character, we'll focus our efforts on understanding what caused them to act differently on this occasion. The nature and extent of any further involvement by us will be informed by what that was.

We will aim to find out why the person did what they did and what prevented them from acting in the right way. This will help us decide if they represent a future risk to people who use services and the public (and if so, in what way) or whether something else was responsible for what went wrong.

If something else was responsible, we'll consider if we need to take other steps to stop it from happening again which don't involve taking regulatory action against the person.

Where the information shows a pattern of concerns, we'll look at why that might be the case. It's more likely that we'll need to take some kind of fitness to practise action if the concerns haven't been successfully addressed.