AHPRA Complaints & Professional Discipline

What we do in AHPRA matters

We assist at every stage of an AHPRA matter, including:

• Notifications, voluntary and mandatory: advising on the scope of the concern, the regulatory powers being exercised, and the practitioner's response options before any submission is made.
• Written responses and submissions: drafting a structured, evidence-based response that addresses each particular of the notification on the standard the National Board is required to apply.
• Health and performance assessments: preparing the practitioner before any assessment is conducted, and responding to the assessor's report.
• Panel hearings: health panels, and performance and professional standards panels.
• SACAT proceedings: disciplinary action applications by a National Board, interim prohibition order applications and reviews, and review of registration decisions.
• Immediate action: suspension or imposition of conditions on registration before a substantive finding. These decisions move quickly and require an immediate, focused response.
• Mandatory notification advice: for treating practitioners, non-treating practitioners, employers and education providers who are weighing whether the National Law requires them to make a notification.
• Appeals and reviews: including appeals from registration and disciplinary decisions where they lie to SACAT under the National Law.
• Cross-regulator matters: where conduct is also being investigated by police, a coroner, the Department for Health and Wellbeing or another regulator.

Our approach

The National Law sets minimum grounds before AHPRA may act on a notification. Many matters that look serious at the outset are properly resolved at the assessment stage with no further action, but only if the response is structured, accurate and on point.

We work with practitioners early.

We read the notification carefully against the practitioner's clinical record and contemporaneous documents, identify what the National Board actually has to find before it can take regulatory action, and advise on the realistic range of outcomes. We do not encourage practitioners to over-respond, admit beyond what the evidence supports, or supply material that has not been requested. We also do not let matters drift. Silence is not strategy.

Where a panel or tribunal hearing is unavoidable, we prepare the matter properly:

• independent expert evidence where required
• engaging with a barrister early, and
• preparation of a focused, professional case to put before the decision-maker.

Our experience wins cases

Stanley & Co is a long-established Adelaide law firm with nearly 150 years of combined practising experience. We regularly act for individuals facing allegations and investigations across criminal, regulatory and disciplinary settings.

Health practitioners face a regulator that is national, well-resourced and engaged in continuous reform. National Law amendments on notifier protections took effect in December 2025, and sexual misconduct findings have been recorded on the public register since April 2026. We act calmly, strategically, and with the understanding that what is at stake is not only registration but the practitioner's professional identity.

We also understand the secondary consequences. Notifications often run alongside employer disciplinary processes, indemnity insurer involvement and personal stress. We help practitioners manage all of it.