Fitness to practise sounds intimidating—and for nurses and midwives facing complaints, it can feel like the hardest side of regulation.

Marie-Therese Hackett is NMBI’s Inquiries Legal Adviser, with 20 years’ experience in the legal profession working across criminal law, civil litigation, and healthcare regulation.

Marie-Therese’s professional background provides a strong foundation for ensuring regulatory processes are fair, transparent, and proportionate. Having worked closely with vulnerable participants in a range of legal processes and regulatory systems, she is deeply aware of the impact such processes can have on the individual.

These experiences have made her passionate about promoting compassionate practice and reducing harm wherever possible. Marie-Therese’s personal experience of neonatal intensive care units has given her a profound respect for healthcare professionals and a deep appreciation of the trust that patients and their families place in the healthcare system. These personal experiences strengthen her commitment to fairness, empathy, and continuous improvements in healthcare regulation.

THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

• How fitness to practice protects public safety
• How the three-stage legal framework for complaints works
• How the Compassion Project transformed witness care through dedicated liaison officers and 24/7 emotional support line
• Why witnesses experience re-traumatisation without trauma-informed practices
• How reducing "witness work" through practical measures supports participants

MORE INFORMATION

NMBI is the statutory body which sets the standards for the education, registration and professional conduct of nurses and midwives. We advise on how nurses and midwives should provide care to patients, their families and society. Our mission is to protect the public and the integrity of the professions of nursing and midwifery through the promotion of high standards of education, training, and professional conduct. We achieve this by providing leadership to registered nurses and midwives to support them to deliver safe care through innovative and proactive professional regulation.

Our functions in safeguarding the public involve establishing and maintaining the Register of Nurses and Midwives. We also establish procedures and criteria for the assessment and registration of nurses and midwives. Visit the Registration section of our website to learn more. Additionally, we set the standards and requirements for nursing and midwifery education programmes. We approve education programmes and further education programmes for the purposes for nurses and midwives. Visit NMBI.ie to learn more.

QUOTES

• When I think of healthcare regulation, we are all working in that wider system to protect the public and the trust in the professions. - Marie Therese Hackett
• When we say that someone is fit to practice, what we mean is that they have the appropriate skills, they have the knowledge, they have the character and the health to practice their profession safely and effectively - Marie Therese Hackett
• With over 90,000 people on the register, the number of complaints coming through is really small. - Marie Therese Hackett
• We launched our witness care project with the focus that we wanted every single person coming through to have a person-focused tailored experience based on trust, showing them respect and appreciation for the role that they play. We can't do our job without witnesses - Marie Therese Hackett
• This is a regulatory process, and emotion has to come out of it, but for those people involved in it, you can never take the emotion out of it. We need to recognize that. - Marie Therese Hackett

KEYWORDS

#witnesscare #altruism #processimprovement #traumainformed #participantsupport