The NMC’s Ambitious for Change report examines how factors such as ethnicity, sexuality and gender may influence registrants’ experience of NMC processes.

Based on fitness to practise (FtP) referral data of 13,805 cases between April 2019 and March 2020, employers made around half of all referrals of black registrants (49.9%, 1,082) and Asian registrants (50%, 519), compared with 40.7% (4,420) of referrals of white registrants.

Black registrants were also more likely than white registrants to see their FtP case go to the adjudication stage, where decisions can be made to limit their practise.

In total, 5,411 (58.2%) of cases involving white registrants were closed at the screening stage compared with 983 (44.2%) of cases involving black registrants. But the NMC research found that black registrants were no more likely to receive a sanction limiting or prohibiting their practise than their white colleagues.

Read the report at www.nmc.org.uk/ambitious-for-change