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As we head towards the festive season and the end of another busy year, the Board is seeking your feedback on the revised Statement of paediatric care. The consultation is open until 4 February 2026 and we encourage you to share your thoughts with us. The Board has retired the Guidelines for clinical recording keeping for chiropractors. Read more about this below, including where you can find support to meet your record keeping obligations. The Board’s expectations of practitioners haven’t changed, but more contemporary resources are available to support chiropractors to maintain clear and accurate health records. We’re now in the late period for renewal, so please renew your registration before 31 December to ensure you can continue to practise and remain on the register of practitioners. Finally, the Board would like to send its deepest condolences to our Jewish community. Now more than ever, we must come together in solidarity, compassion and hope - supporting one another and rejecting hate in all its forms.
I wish you all a happy summer and thank you for your continued dedication to our profession and our communities.
Dr Wayne Minter AM Chair, Chiropractic Board of Australia
CONTENT WARNING. This newsletter contains references to sexual misconduct that some readers might find distressing.
If you need help, support is available.
You can access 24-hour phone and online support services from the national sexual assault, family, and domestic violence helpline: 1800 Respect.
13YARN can provide crisis support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
Registered health practitioners who have had a concern raised about them are encouraged to contact their insurer, professional association or legal adviser for guidance and support. We publish information on general and profession specific support services on Ahpra's Support services webpage.
Consultation is open for the revised Statement on paediatric care. Read the consultation paper on the Board’s website and use the online form or submission template to share your feedback.
‘Our profession is privileged to provide care to our communities, including to children, and we take pride in doing so safely. The Board wants to ensure the advice and information we provide to practitioners is as clear and easy to understand as possible, especially when in relation to providing care for paediatric patients,’ Board Chair Dr Wayne Minter said.
‘We want to create one point of reference for chiropractors to refer to when treating children, rather than the two documents we currently have.’
‘We’re seeking feedback on whether the revised statement is clear. We also want to know if you have any suggestions for improvements,’ Dr Minter said.
The consultation is open for eight weeks, closing on Wednesday 4 February 2026.
Changes to the way sexual misconduct is reported on the public Register of practitioners are coming in early 2026.
Practitioners who have a tribunal finding of professional misconduct involving sexual misconduct will have this information permanently published on the register. This change is retrospective, applying from the start of regulation of a profession in the National Scheme.
The information recorded on the register will include a statement that:
Health ministers decided on this change to protect public safety and ensure people are able to make an informed decision when choosing a health practitioner.
Ahpra and the National Boards are finalising guidance on sexual misconduct and the National Law following extensive consultation and will release this guidance as soon as possible. We have also produced a guide to the overall suite of National Law changes which includes more detail on the sexual misconduct changes.
This change will be distressing for some practitioners. If you are contacted by Ahpra about additional information being put on your register entry, we encourage you to contact your insurer, professional association or legal adviser for guidance and support. We publish information on general and profession specific support services on our support services page.
The Guidelines for clinical record keeping for chiropractors were retired on 1 December 2025.
This decision follows a public consultation earlier this year as part of the Board’s review of the guidelines. The Board noted that the guidelines, which were introduced in 2012, could be considered overly prescriptive, included outdated references and didn’t align with the Board’s regulatory principles of responsive and risk-based regulation.
You can find information about record keeping in the shared Code of conduct which includes regulatory guidance on record keeping.
Additional resources to support practitioners to meet their professional obligations are available on the Codes and guidelines webpage and include:
People who make a complaint against a health practitioner will be protected from reprisals or retaliation under increases to consumer protections that came into effect on 1 December 2025.
People who make a complaint in good faith are already protected from liability for information they provide to Ahpra and the National Boards. The changes will extend this protection, making it an offence for someone to threaten, intimidate or otherwise retaliate against a notifier for making a complaint.
The maximum penalty will be $60,000 for an individual or $120,000 for a body corporate.
It will also be illegal to enter into a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with a patient, unless it clearly states in writing that it does not limit a person from making a notification or providing assistance to regulators.
Any NDAs that do seek to limit a person’s ability to make a complaint will be invalid.
The consumer protection changes are part of a series of amendments to the National Law coming into effect over the coming months.
Information on the changes, how they will be implemented and what they mean for practitioners and the public is available in the full information guide.
The guide is available on the National Law amendments page on the Ahpra website, which includes links to related topics and will be updated as our implementation activities progress.
Health ministers have released the final report of the Independent review of complexity in the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme (the National Scheme) with a formal response to 26 recommended actions.
Ahpra welcomes this important milestone and commends independent reviewer Sue Dawson on the work she has carried out since being appointed to the role in April 2024.
Ahpra CEO Justin Untersteiner said the agency was well placed to respond to the report and looked forward to working with ministers, departments and other stakeholders on future reforms.
‘The National Scheme has been built on solid foundations but there is much more to do. We know that what got us here, won’t get us there.’
Co-convenor of the Forum of National Registration and Accreditation Scheme Chairs, Rachel Phillips, welcomed the release of the Dawson review.
‘For Ahpra to be effective, there needs to be transparency around the scheme and the measures in place to support practitioners and protect the public,’ Ms Phillips said.
‘The Dawson review adds to the work already underway to improve the system and foster a level of collaboration among regulators and other stakeholders that will serve us well into the future.’
The guidance for telehealth and virtual care has been updated to ensure patients receive high-quality care – whether it be in person, over the phone or online.
It expands advice for telehealth prescribers, highlighting poor practice concerns around prescribing that relies on text, email or online questionnaires to assess a patients’ needs rather than a face-to-face, video or telephone consultation.
‘Telehealth has been great in making it easier for people to get the care they need. We just want to make sure that convenience doesn’t come at the cost of safety or quality,’ Ahpra Chief Executive Officer, Justin Untersteiner said.
The guidance reinforces to practitioners that any healthcare provided through telehealth is the practitioner’s responsibility and not the employer’s. Practitioners working in telehealth-only clinics, particularly those focused on single treatments or medicines, are encouraged to review the clinical governance framework to ensure the care they provide isn’t compromised by commercial gain or convenience.
Good telehealth practices include:
National Boards have also developed case studies for safe use of telehealth.
