Probity and Honesty for Healthcare Professionals for Health Practitioners facing an Ahpra notification, complaint or allegation

The fact first, then the correction, then the change. What was written or said that was not right, stated plainly and before any context; why, as far as you know it; who relied on it and what that cost them; what it has been corrected to, and when; and what now stands behind the correction — a records audit with a before and after, a CV or profile corrected, an interest declared, supervision or probity CPD, each dated. The course names four things a regulator weighs: insight, remediation, candour during the process, and whether there is a pattern. Three of the four are decided by the response and what follows it.

Yes — and on a probity matter before you give any account at all, to the patient, your employer, Ahpra or your National Board, your profession’s Council of NSW or the HCCC, the OHO, or a panel or tribunal. Candour during the process is assessed in its own right, so the account is given once, checked against the records, with your indemnity insurer or defence organisation and a lawyer reading it first. Where a Medicare claim is involved, take legal advice as well, because the Commonwealth runs its own process. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and no course determines the outcome of a notification.

Yes: the account corrected, the reason understood, and the change shown — an audit, a corrected profile, supervision — each dated. No provider is accredited by Ahpra or any National Board, and no course decides a matter. What the Board, a panel and a tribunal weigh is dated, targeted remediation with reflection that engages the standard — and this course names the four things a regulator weighs in a probity matter (insight, remediation, candour during the process and whether there is a pattern), so the connection is plain on the certificate and in your reflective account. Check the wording of any condition, undertaking or direction with your indemnity insurer or defence organisation, your union or professional association or a lawyer before you rely on it.

After an assessment or an investigation your Board may take no further action, caution you, accept an undertaking or impose conditions (section 178), refer you to a panel, or refer the most serious matters to a tribunal (section 193), which can reprimand, impose conditions, fine, suspend, cancel registration and disqualify (section 196). Dishonesty goes to whether you are a fit and proper person to hold registration, and a GP who altered more than 4,000 record entries after a Medicare review had his registration cancelled. A finding need not end a career: the course records that demonstrated insight and a commitment to ethical behaviour weigh in favour of retaining registration, even after a breach, though no outcome is assured.

Not Ahpra, in either case. In New South Wales your profession’s Council of NSW and the Health Care Complaints Commission manage conduct, health and performance matters between them, and Ahpra does not investigate registered practitioners there. In Queensland every complaint goes first to the Office of the Health Ombudsman, which decides what it keeps and what it refers on to Ahpra and the Board. The letterhead tells you which body has your file, and the same response — the reasoning, the standard, the remediation — is what each of them reads for. A probity matter arising from a Medicare claim can be with the Commonwealth’s compliance process at the same time, in every state.

Because what is being assessed is whether you can be relied on, and the course is explicit that a probity matter is assessed whether or not harm occurred. A record, a claim or a CV is relied on by people who never meet you — the next clinician, Medicare, an employer, the Board — and the question is whether they can trust it. The remediation does not depend on how the episode turned out either: the account corrected, the reason understood and the change shown can be done, and evidenced, whatever the outcome for the patient or the size of the sum.

It affects how the matter is characterised; it is not the threshold. The course treats misrepresenting credentials, titles or experience as a serious breach whether it was intentional or negligent, so how it happened is part of your account rather than the whole of it. What answers the concern is showing that you understand the obligation now, that the CV, the title, the website and every directory listing have been corrected, with the date, and that something concrete has changed — the difference between an explanation and a remediation.

It can, and it can also help. The course states that failure to cooperate honestly during an investigation may be treated as a probity issue in itself, regardless of the initial concern — which means candour during the process is read in your favour when it is there. The method is the same in every profession: ask for the question in writing, check the records before you answer, say plainly where you cannot recall rather than reconstructing, correct anything you get wrong the day you notice it, and take advice before the first response rather than after it.

Speak to your indemnity insurer today, and correct it yourself. A correction you make, explained and dated — what was said, what the records show, why the first account fell short — is read as candour, and candour is one of the four things the course names a regulator weighing. A correction extracted later reads the other way: a tribunal treated one doctor’s continued denials to his employer, the Board and the tribunal as a significant breach of his obligations of candour and honesty. Correcting it yourself is a different event from having it corrected for you.

Not by itself. Clause 8.3 requires records made at the time or as soon as possible afterwards, and a clearly dated later entry made to protocol is ordinary practice. What the course calls falsification is altering, backdating or omitting: an entry made to look as if it was written at the time, a note changed after a complaint, something left out because it would have looked bad. Omission is the form less often recognised — a record accurate about everything it mentions can still be dishonest about what it leaves out. Never improve an old entry; add a dated one.

No. A Medicare matter runs in the Commonwealth’s compliance process as well as Ahpra’s, and the consequences differ in kind: repayment of claims, fines or criminal charges, and loss of a provider number, beside any regulatory outcome. The two can run at the same time, an admission to one may be seen by the other, and a finding in one does not decide the other. Clause 8.11 asks for honesty and transparency in financial dealings either way. Take legal advice, not only indemnity advice, before responding to either; the Financial Integrity course goes into billing in depth.

They overlap where a claim was not true, and they are often taken together. This course works from honesty inwards: records altered or left incomplete, qualifications and titles, accounts to a patient, an employer or the Board, undeclared interests, a concern about a colleague not raised, and candour during the process itself. Financial Integrity works from the billing outwards: the item and its descriptor, time-based notes, bulk-billing, financial consent, delegated billing and the Medicare process running alongside. If the letter uses the word dishonesty, start here; if it names item numbers, start there — and where it does both, take both.

Each National Board sets its own continuing professional development registration standard, and targeted CPD on the subject of a notification is among the remediation the Board and the tribunals recognise. The certificate records the course, the 2 CPD hours and the date, which is what a CPD portfolio needs; how the hours count towards your requirement depends on the standard’s categories, so check them.

The course is 2 CPD hours, self-paced, with twelve months’ access from purchase. The certificate is issued on completion, dated, with the course title and the CPD hours, for a response, a portfolio or your CPD record.