Remediation courses for Chiropractors facing a Chiropractic Board notification, complaint or investigation

Start with the Core Set above. Those nine cover both halves of what the Board reads: the standards you are judged against — Ethics and Ethical Standards for Chiropractors and Professionalism and Professional Standards for Chiropractors, both written to Code of Ethics — and what it weighs once the facts are settled: insight, reflection, remediation, assurance the concern will not recur, and how the process itself works. They apply to every notification whatever the concern.

Then add the courses that match the concern actually raised. Use the selector above: choose the type of concern in your letter and you will see the courses that address it directly.

Speak to your indemnity insurer, union or lawyer before you respond. They will tell you what evidence is appropriate for your particular matter. Each course is NZ$200 and carries 2 CPD hours; the Bulk Buy Offer covers any five for NZ$850 or any ten for NZ$1,400, saving up to NZ$600.

The Chiropractic Board. It alone decides whether you hold a practising certificate, what conditions sit on your scope of practice, and whether you are fit to practise. Its Registrar considers every complaint and notification first and decides which route it takes: a competence review for competence, a fitness to practise review for health, or a Professional Conduct Committee for conduct — or educational feedback, or no further action.

A Professional Conduct Committee is appointed by the Board but acts independently of it. It investigates the particular concern referred to it and reports back with recommendations, which may include laying a charge before the Tribunal.

The Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal is the last stage and the only one that can find professional misconduct. Check the letterhead on your letter: it tells you which stage you are at.

Interim suspension is the Board suspending your practising certificate — or adding conditions to your scope of practice — while a competence review, a health assessment or a Professional Conduct Committee investigation is still under way, where it believes there is a risk of serious harm to the public. It is protective rather than punitive and is not a finding against you. In many cases an agreement setting temporary limitations on your practice is reached instead.

You are given the opportunity to respond before an order is made, and the Board can revoke it at any time once satisfied you can practise safely. Contact your indemnity insurer, union or lawyer the same day. What you put in writing first shapes everything that follows.

Yes. Healthcare Ethics Courses issues a CPD certificate for every course, recording 2 CPD hours, the course title and the date of completion. That is what makes it usable as evidence in a response, a remediation plan or a professional development record.

On accreditation: the courses are written to Code of Ethics and the Board’s standards and policies beneath it, but are not accredited or endorsed by the Chiropractic Board or any other New Zealand body, and no responsible authority accredits courses from any provider. The Board’s recertification programme asks for at least 20 hours of CPD every year over a two-year cycle, varied, relevant to the chiropractor scope of practice, with an identified cultural or diversity responsiveness activity each cycle and reflection on practice as a mandatory element, all logged in the Board’s online CPD Record; up to a fifth of practising certificate holders are audited each cycle. A course with your own written reflection attached fits that frame; log the hours and keep the reflection with them.

Access runs for twelve months from the date of purchase. You start immediately, work at your own pace, and there is no schedule to keep to within that period.

Finishing a course does not end your access. Once you have completed it and downloaded your certificate you can return to the material as often as you like for the rest of the twelve months, at no further cost.

No. The certificate records the date you completed the course, and that date does not change. Revisiting the material inside your twelve months does not produce a newly dated one.

If you need a certificate carrying a later date — because the Board, an employer or the Tribunal has asked for recent evidence — you buy the course again. Within twelve months of your original purchase a repeat is half price; after twelve months it is the full NZ$200.

No. No course, from us or from anyone else, determines the outcome of a notification, a competence review, a Professional Conduct Committee investigation or a Tribunal hearing, and any provider suggesting otherwise is worth treating with caution.

What a course can do is help you build the insight and reflection your response needs, and give you a dated, verifiable certificate to evidence it. How much weight that carries depends on the circumstances of the individual case.

Four things, and the order matters. Whether you understand what went wrong. Whether you accept responsibility for your part in it. Whether you recognise the effect it had — on the patient and their whānau, on colleagues, and on public confidence in the profession. And whether you can show meaningful change as a result.

Many responses supply the first and the last and leave out the middle two. That is a common shape of a finding that insight is lacking. The Insight, Reflection and Remediation courses address each in turn.

Orders of that kind are common: the Board may require a course as part of a recertification programme or as a condition on your practising certificate, and the Tribunal regularly orders a chiropractor to complete a course in professional ethics or professional boundaries. Our Ethics, Professionalism, Professional Boundaries and Ethical Boundaries courses are written for that purpose and each issues a dated certificate.

Whether a particular course satisfies a particular order is for the body that made it. Read the wording of the order with your indemnity insurer, union or lawyer, and where it requires approval in advance, seek that approval before you enrol.

Yes. There is no registration check and no requirement to hold a current practising certificate. The courses are taken as often by chiropractors who are suspended, who have conditions on their scope of practice, or who are working towards a new practising certificate as they are by those with a live notification.

If conditions require you to complete specific education, check the wording with your indemnity insurer, union or lawyer before choosing, so that what you complete matches what was ordered.

The Board’s Professional Boundaries standard of July 2026, which now sits alongside the Code of Ethics as secondary legislation. A sexual relationship with a current patient is never acceptable; a relationship with a former patient is judged on the length of the care, the patient’s vulnerability, the time elapsed and the power imbalance; gifts beyond a token, familiarity online and treating whānau outside the standard’s conditions are all boundary matters. Chiropractic involves touch, undressing and repeated visits, which is why the Board sets this out at such length.

What every boundary standard has in common is where it puts the responsibility: the standard says it lies solely with the chiropractor, and the imbalance of power is treated as a permanent feature of the relationship rather than something that ends at the door. Boundary matters are a common route to a charge of professional misconduct against a chiropractor before the Tribunal, and the standard itself lists a Professional Conduct Committee, interim suspension and mandatory training among what follows a breach.

Contact your indemnity provider, professional association or lawyer before responding to an allegation in this category, and before contacting the patient or anyone connected with them.

No. A concern that a mental or physical condition may affect your ability to practise safely goes into the Board’s fitness to practise review. If you acknowledge the difficulty the Board discusses voluntary options first; it may require a medical examination by an approved practitioner, which it pays for in full, and you see the report and may respond. It may lead to conditions and monitoring, or suspension until you recover, but it is a health process, not a conduct one. Employers and health practitioners are required to notify the Board in this situation, and you are required to notify the Board yourself.

What the Board still wants to see is insight into how the condition affected your practice and what you have put in place. The Insight and Reflection courses are as relevant here as in a conduct matter.

These are probity matters in the Board’s eyes. The Code of Ethics requires that recommended treatment be based on the patient’s clinical needs and not personal gain, and honesty with third-party payers such as ACC and insurers; the Board’s policy on extended-term management plans and pre-payment arrangements and its advertising policy sit beneath that. Choose Probity, Honesty and Financial Integrity above: Probity and Honesty, Financial Integrity, Documentation and Effective Communication address the concerns often raised, alongside the Core Set.

Yes, and often particularly so. Chiropractors who trained overseas are sometimes navigating an unfamiliar regulatory system at the same time as responding to a concern, and the vocabulary differs from what they learnt — practising certificate rather than licence, scope of practice rather than registration category, a competence review panel that may visit your practice rather than a fitness to practise panel, and a Board that handles competence, health and conduct through three different routes. Newly registered overseas-trained chiropractors are also on the Board’s own recertification programme for their first period of practice.

The courses are written to the Board’s Code of Ethics, its Professional Boundaries standard and its competency standards, and explain the process in New Zealand terms.

Yes. Courses are taken privately online at your own pace. We never share participant details with the Chiropractic Board, the Tribunal, an employer, a union or an indemnity provider unless you choose to do so yourself.

Many chiropractors complete a course before deciding whether to include it in a submission at all.