Justice for professional health practitioners

Professional practitioners are bound by codes of ethics. When a complaint is made, a process is triggered which parallels legal processes. Codes of ethics then become a reference point for determining guilt or innocence within a grievance process. Investigatory mechanisms used by bodies regulating professionals utilise elements which resemble the justice system, including an evidence gathering phase, prosecution, judgement, and sentencing. These functions are generally performed without the level of skills, training or safeguards associated with the legal system. The basic mode is an adversarial one, and judgements often fall within the rationale of a punitive ethos. In this chapter a critique is firstly presented regarding the current means by which grievances are processed by relevant regulatory bodies. Alternatives approaches to addressing complaints about professionals are presented (with especial reference to health professionals), referencing restorative justice, alternative dispute resolution, therapeutic jurisprudence and other dialogical processes. We explore the potential for processing grievances using methods and values which are focused on the needs of the parties to the grievance (including the wider community), reconciliation and restitution, with the goals of 'right relationships' rather than ' right rules'.