Recently, BIMA’s Advocacy team met with the regional leads of NHS England Professional Standards, representing all areas of England. The meeting focused on several key concerns raised by Muslim primary care healthcare professionals, particularly around referrals to professional standards, fitness to practise (FtP) processes, and the role of responsible officers and performers’ lists.

We highlighted the need to recognise the impact of Islamophobia in the workplace, the chilling effect of censorship on political activism, and the apparent double standards faced by those advocating for Palestine. We also highlighted some of our data and the negative impact on mental health that undergoing referral processes.

It was a constructive and open meeting. Encouragingly, following our previous discussions, NHSE have now begun integrating religious monitoring into their data collection to capture nuances that ethnic monitoring alone often misses. We also discussed the need to review the referral process from the GMC in cases where complaints are not upheld, and they were keen to investigate how going forward they could ensure the follow-up is supportive rather than punitive.

There was a shared desire to reduce the burden on doctors where regulators have found there was no further action following a complaint, with a directive that any associated reflection should be succinct and, if preferred, to be done verbally and organised by the NHSE team. There was also a push for regulators to indicate where matters could be routinely discussed in appraisals, rather than create additional work and stress.

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