Health Licensing System is Vigorous and Strict
A CBC report suggesting Ontario regulators are failing to properly monitor an Ottawa chiropodist should not undermine the public’s confidence in our health licensing system, which is vigorous and strict, says Elyse Sunshine.
CBC’s Go Public reports that Pierre Dupont, a former dentist suspended for life by the Ordre des dentistes du Québec, has retrained as a chiropodist and is practising in Ontario despite his past failings.
Go Public notes on its website that when Dupont was a dentist in 2000, a 71-year-old woman stopped breathing while he was giving her dental implants and couldn’t be revived. It also claims that an Ontario chiropody patient has now filed a complaint about Dupont in his new profession.“Certainly when you read something like this it sounds concerning,” says Sunshine, a partner with the health law firm Rosen Sunshine LLP. “I think the public has to appreciate that the application process to become a regulated health professional is quite vigorous.”
This would be particularly true in a situation like Dupont’s, where a member of one regulated health profession has lost the privilege to practise and is applying to work in another profession, Sunshine says. “It’s not a foregone conclusion that you get registration,” says Sunshine, who represents health-care professionals but was not involved in the Dupont case.
Applicants to a second health profession have to provide a great deal of information to their new regulator to establish they are suitable candidates, she tells AdvocateDaily.com. And she says it is unfair to assume that Dupont's character is somehow flawed and he will fail as a chiropodist because he failed as a dentist. His new profession called for extensive retraining and he would have had to fulfill rigorous requirements to earn his new licence, Sunshine says. “I’m not minimizing what happened in the past, but there are people who really do change their lives,” the Toronto lawyer says. “And maybe dentistry wasn’t a suitable profession for him, or it certainly didn’t seem to be. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that all professions should shut the door on someone who may have skills to contribute to society in another manner.”
Dupont may have had issues as a dentist but that doesn’t mean he will be a poor chiropodist, she says. “Even people who have done their time — criminals — get an opportunity to rehabilitate themselves. That’s part of our system,” Sunshine adds. Before Dupont was given full privileges to practise in his new profession, the College of Chiropodists of Ontario issued him a restricted licence with strict conditions, including being placed under the supervision of Ottawa chiropodist David Greenberg, the CBC reports. But Greenberg, who has been practising since 1973, told Go Public that the College never contacted him for his opinion before it issued Dupont a full licence. Sunshine says it seems quite unusual that the College wouldn’t have spoken with the supervisor, but the terms of the undertaking may have simply required the supervisor to report in the event there was a problem. Health supervision agreements often require supervising professionals to report immediately if they have any concerns that the person under their watch poses a risk to the public.
Normally, when health professionals work under supervision, their supervisor must make reports about their progress on a particular frequency such as every month, six months, annually or other basis, Sunshine says. Sunshine assists health professionals who are facing the suspension or revocation of their certificate of registration or have lost a licence either because of disciplinary issues or health problems. She says, in her experience, regulators put such professionals through a rigorous process to ensure the public interest is protected and certainly do not permit professionals to practise until there are fit to do so.
A health-care professional who is red-flagged in the application process for registration for past failings, as Dupont would have been, would be the subject of review by a registration committee during his application process, Sunshine says. This is consistent with Dupont initially being issued a restricted licence allowing him to practise chiropody only under certain conditions, she says. In this Internet age, health professionals are under the microscope like never before and headlines about supposed failures by regulators abound, Sunshine says. Sunshine has seen how rigorous the system is and says she finds it ironic that the public mistrusts regulatory bodies and assumes they are on the side of practitioners, conspiring to cover up their failings. “I can tell you there is nothing further from the truth and the regulators take their public protection mandate very seriously and work within the law to ensure the public is protected,” she says.
“Obviously sometimes things happen, and that’s why there is a complaint and discipline process, but, again, people can rehabilitate themselves and they change and they improve, and so to automatically prevent someone from moving forward with their life without taking a very close look at what steps they may have taken to facilitate them being in a position to contribute to society would be unfortunate."
Fortunately, the law governing health professionals has a robust system in place to ensure that the public interest is protected but regulators have the ability to still consider significant things an individual may have done to turn their life around and make them fit to be part of a regulated health profession,” Sunshine says.
