As part of the Department’s mandate, the Department of Healthcare Professions is continuing to develop and/or amend policies to address concerns that will pose threat or risk to patient’s safety. One of the issues that the department considered it to have an effect in the delivery of quality care is break from practice of health care practitioners. There is evidence that nonpractice of one’s profession does impact on the person’s skills, performance and competence that may affect licensing / maintenance of license processes​.

Break in practice policy aims to:

• Provide terms and conditions that will serve as guide for health practitioners with discontinued practice for some period.

• Define the length of discontinued practice, which will constitute break from practice.

• Define the period of supervised practice that will be required for those practitioners with break in practice.

• Uphold the department’s responsibility to ensure that public receives health care services from qualified/competent practitioners at all times.

• All healthcare practitioners who have break from practice should undergo a specified period of supervised practice based on the duration of break prior to granting the license /renewal of license.