<p>Professional regulation is classically an internal affair, with the medical profession and their attendant body, the General Medical Council (GMC) as it became, providing the central example. It is a hallmark of an occupation's professional development, handing them considerable control over the requirements for entry into the profession and the continued policing of it. Historically, the concern had been on ensuring that the honour and reputation of the profession as a whole was not besmirched by the errant actions of a single practitioner. As this excellent volume reveals, the classical model requires, and is undergoing, an update. As across all areas of healthcare and medical law, the historical shift from a relationship between doctor and patient characterised by supposedly benign paternalism, to a world which favours respect for self-determination and autonomy whilst emphasising patient safety and public expectation, has greatly impacted on regulation as well. It is now the servant of many masters, some of which may undercut that classical view. Meanwhile evolution in the medical profession itself has accounted for the steady proliferation of bodies involved in the regulation of healthcare professionals.</p>
<p>As such, healthcare regulation is presently an area of law on the move. Of course, as readers of this excellent volume will quickly realise, this is hardly a novel state of affairs, as a narrative of repeated scandals, investigations and exposés (thoroughly précised in the first chapter) has prompted recent joint efforts by the various Law Commissions in the UK to re-foot the law in a more coherent, unified manner. It is onto these ever-shifting sands that the authors of this excellent volume tread. Primarily intended for a specialist readership, the volume is based on, but considerably expands beyond, the borders of the publication's first edition, <italic>Fitness to Practise</italic> (Sweet & Maxwell, 2005). Indeed, the extent to which the volume has been updated and expanded, allied with the numerous structural changes in the nature of the subject since then, present the reader with a freshly minted, new work, rather than simply an updated second edition of that original publication. The work groups its thirty-six chapters into six parts dealing, respectively, with the regulatory landscape (complete with a set of exceptionally useful tables setting out the various powers held by each body), registration, continuing professional development, fitness to practice...</p>
