Later she adds:
`It can also be helpful to remember that while each health worker may be an
expert in their own area, faced with expertise of another kind they are just one of
the people.'3.5.2 A personal journey
The latter years of my professional career were spent in senior positions with the
statutory bodies charged with the regulation of the nursing, midwifery and health
visiting professions. In 1998 ± three years after my retirement from the last of those
posts, and by then the Chairman of a Community Health Council and Vice
Chairman of the Association of Community Health Councils for England and
Wales ± I wrote a chapter entitled How does it look from the outside?' [16]. .Theit'
was the way in which the regulatory body for my profession addressed the
performance of its statutory functions.) I opened that chapter by quoting a letter by
Leo Haynes published inThe Independentin 1996. He took to task the then
President of The Law Society who had recently declared that the role of a
professional regulatory body was to identify and then serve the interests of the
profession. Mr Haynes corrected him, pointing out that its primary duty was to
serve the interests of the public.
From that beginning, looking at my own profession, I argued the case for greater
openness, critical self-appraisal, vigilance and competence. I still hold the view
expressed in the chapter's final sentence: We must always remember that this cachet of professional regulation is not for adornment ± it is for application.' Although, when writing those words, I had already made sufficient of a journey to comment in a constructively critical manner about the regulatory system for my profession, I had not reached the conclusion that the perpetuation of a panoply of regulatory bodies was no longer the right way to serve the public interest. A further three years on, having not only completed the work with the ICN to which I have referred, but having also served as the chairman of a National Health Service Trust and come to grapple with its clinical governance agenda, I have almost completed the journey. Inow see no grounds and can no longer find any justification for the existence of eight separate regulatory bodies for the health professions. I no longer see a use for that termprofessional self-regulation', beyond it meaning . .. that component of professional regulation that the individual practitioner imposes on himself or herself as a matter of personal professional accountability' [17]. Given the purpose of the whole professional regulatory process, I no longer argue for or seek to justify the existence of a regulatory body .whether for a single profession or many) in which the profession's members outnumber those who can be seen as better able to represent apublic' view.
Icontinue my journey, keen to co-operate with any person or organisation
interested in creating a twenty-first century model of professional regulation. In
doing so, however, I have to record my concern that neither the relevant passages
in the NHS Plan .The NHS Plan: A plan for investment; A plan for reform)[18], or the
wording of the consultation documentsModernising Regulation: The New Nursing
The Professional Dimension 43