Is regulation a necessary evil?
It may appear to many practitioners that regulation is a necessary evil, which does very little for the profession or the individual practitioner. However, one should not lose sight of the importance of regulation, especially that associated with health and social care. I suspect many would agree, retrospectively, that tighter and more stringent regulation of financial services would have been welcomed in the mid–1990s to avoid such repercussions we currently face in the financial market. Yet, one often hears somewhat negative opinions when we talk of the Health Professions Council (HPC) and its role in the regulatory function of paramedics.