Employment law support for medical and dental practices
A qualified solicitor on your team — same working day, unlimited questions — so employment issues are resolved quickly and properly, before they turn into tribunal claims or regulatory referrals.
Advice for employers. We act for the practice.
The practice manager problem.
In most GP surgeries and dental practices, one person handles employment matters. Usually the practice manager, alongside CQC compliance, rotas, patient complaints, payroll, information governance and everything else that keeps the practice running.
That person is asked, without warning and usually at the worst possible moment, to make decisions that would occupy a specialist.
These are not questions with obvious answers, and the cost of getting them wrong extends well beyond the individual employee. Yet very few practices have in-house legal support, and instructing solicitors at hourly rates for day-to-day questions is difficult to justify against practice income.
The employment law pressures specific to healthcare practices.
Employment issues and regulatory issues are not the same thing. When the employee is a registrant — a doctor, dentist, nurse, hygienist or pharmacist — there is a question in the background about whether a matter is purely an employment one. Almost always, it is. But handling it well is what keeps it that way, and that judgement is easier to make with advice than without. More on this below.
Employment status is a live financial exposure
Dental associates, locum clinicians, self-employed hygienists and sessional staff are often engaged on terms that describe them as self-employed. Whether that label reflects the reality of the arrangement is a separate question, and the consequences of getting it wrong — holiday pay, pension contributions, national minimum wage, tax — can be substantial and retrospective.
Partnership structures complicate everything
GP practices are frequently partnerships rather than companies. Partners are not employees, salaried GPs are, and locums may be neither. Disputes between partners, the exit of a partner, and the treatment of salaried clinicians all raise questions that ordinary employment frameworks do not neatly answer.
Mergers, PCN arrangements and contract changes trigger TUPE
Practice mergers, list dispersals, and the movement of services between providers are common in primary care, and each can involve transferring staff, consultation obligations and pension considerations.
Whistleblowing and patient safety concerns
Healthcare has a strong — and correct — culture of raising concerns about patient safety. Protected disclosures are consequently more common than in most sectors, and the legal protections are significant. A concern raised about safety, handled defensively, can convert quickly into a claim.
Recruitment pressure and international staff
Persistent recruitment difficulty means many practices sponsor international clinicians and rely heavily on locums. That brings sponsor licence duties, right-to-work obligations and registration verification into the employment picture, with consequences that reach the whole staffing model rather than a single hire.
Small teams, high intensity
A practice of twenty people has no HR department, no employment specialist, and nowhere to absorb a difficult situation. Interpersonal conflict, burnout, long-term sickness and stress-related absence carry disproportionate operational impact — and clinical settings generate all of them.
Most of this never needs to reach a regulator.
The purpose of good employment handling in a practice is to keep matters where they belong — resolved internally, quickly, and properly. The great majority of concerns involving a clinician are employment matters and should be dealt with as such. Understanding where the boundary sits is not about being quick to escalate; it is about knowing what you are actually dealing with, so you can deal with it well.
Most concerns are employment matters, not regulatory ones
Regulators are concerned with fitness to practise — broadly, whether a registrant poses a current and ongoing risk to patient safety, to public confidence in the profession, or to professional standards. The GMC states plainly that resolving individual complaints and punishing doctors for past mistakes is not its role, and both the GMC and GDC build their guidance around resolving concerns locally wherever possible; the GDC observes that complaints of this kind often need not come to it at all, and could have been resolved between the patient and the practice. A performance issue, a breakdown in a working relationship, a one-off error met with insight and correction: these are ordinarily employment matters, and treating them as anything else is disproportionate and a distraction from the real problem.
Sources: GMC, Deciding whether to refer a matter to the GMC — guidance for employers · GDC, Dealing with feedback and concerns
The regulator is not the forum for a workplace dispute
This is worth stating directly, because it happens often. The GDC notes that it often receives complaints involving disputes between dental professionals that do not necessarily raise broader concerns about fitness to practise or pose a risk to patient safety, and points out that the process can be costly, protracted and stressful for all concerned. Its own suggestion is that other forums — mediation or business resolution services — may provide a more suitable outcome, and it points to professional associations and ACAS for independent advice. Partner fallouts, associate disagreements and interpersonal conflict are employment and commercial problems, and a regulatory referral rarely achieves what the person making it hopes for.
How the clinician responds can change the answer
The GMC expressly takes account of insight and remediation — whether the individual has taken steps that reduce the risk of similar concerns arising again, such as training, supervision, coaching or mentoring relevant to the concern raised. A concern handled well locally, with appropriate support, may not require referral at all. Which is to say: how you handle something in the first fortnight can determine whether it ever becomes a regulatory question.
Source: GMC, Deciding whether to refer a matter to the GMC — guidance for employers
Look at the environment before treating it as a performance problem
Both regulators expect context to be taken into account. The GDC highlights human factors — technology, equipment, workload, and relationships with colleagues — as contributors to errors during treatment. The GMC expects employers to take the impact of the working environment into account so that referral decisions are fair and proportionate, and recognises that sub-optimal induction and support may contribute to disproportionate referrals for internationally trained doctors. For a practice recruiting internationally that is an equality consideration as well as a practical one, and for any practice it is a reminder that what presents as an individual performance issue sometimes isn't.
Sources: GDC, Dealing with feedback and concerns · GMC, guidance for employers
A health condition is not misconduct
The GMC is explicit that having a health condition is not of itself a departure from professional standards, although doctors are expected to take steps to manage any risk to patients arising from it. For an employer this sits directly alongside sickness absence management, reasonable adjustments and disability discrimination — and handling it as a health and capability matter, properly supported, is usually both the right approach and the one that keeps it from escalating.
Source: GMC, guidance for employers
Concerns will usually be raised with you first
Clinicians have professional duties to raise concerns where patients may be at risk. The GDC frames these as concerns about the health, behaviour or professional performance of a colleague; about any aspect of the environment where treatment is provided; and about being asked to do something that conflicts with the duty to put patients' interests first — and expects those concerns to be raised, in the first instance, within the workplace. In practice that means they land with the practice manager, principal or partner. How that first conversation goes matters enormously: handled well, the issue is resolved in-house; handled poorly, it escalates, and carries whistleblowing and detriment risk on top of everything else.
Sources: GDC, Dealing with feedback and concerns · GDC Standards, Principle 8
Your contracts must not restrict raising patient safety concerns
A concrete point that catches practices out. Dental professionals must not enter into any contract or agreement that would prevent them from raising concerns about patient safety, or restrict what they could say if raising a concern. That has direct consequences for associate agreements, employment contracts and — most commonly overlooked — settlement agreements and confidentiality clauses on exit, which need an appropriate carve-out. The same logic applies to internal policy: professional duties of candour require clinicians to be open with patients when something goes wrong, and both regulators are clear that apologising is not an admission of legal liability.
Sources: GDC, Dealing with feedback and concerns · GMC, Openness and honesty when things go wrong
Where a referral genuinely is required, it needs to be right
Sometimes the threshold is met, and the decision then has to be made properly. The GMC tells employers of doctors that they must speak to the doctor's responsible officer when deciding whether to refer, unless there is an immediate patient safety risk or the matter is urgent or high-profile; that they may first need to complete their own local investigation and consider its conclusions; and that they should take reasonable steps to ensure any referral is fair, proportionate and accurate. Note that the responsible officer framework is a statutory scheme for doctors — other professions have different arrangements. Particular care is needed where the individual has previously raised patient safety concerns, which the GMC asks about specifically so that the referral process is not used inappropriately in response.
Sources: GMC, guidance for employers · The Medical Profession (Responsible Officers) Regulations 2010
Interim restrictions arrive as urgent employment problems
Where restrictions are placed on a clinician's practice during an investigation, they land immediately on the employer, raising questions of suspension, supervision, redeployment and pay that all have to be resolved quickly and lawfully.
The common thread is this: in almost every one of these situations, what determines whether a matter stays a manageable employment issue or becomes something larger is how well it is handled in the first few days.
That is precisely where Counsl is designed to help.
This section describes the kinds of issues that arise and links to the published guidance behind each point. It is general information, not legal advice on any particular situation, and regulatory guidance is revised from time to time — check the linked sources for the current position.
For a longer look at where the line sits, read our related article: Do employment issues in a dental or GP practice need to be referred to the regulator?
How Counsl works for practices.
-
We plug into the systems you already use
Counsl integrates with Microsoft Teams and your HR system, so advice is available where your team already works.
-
Ask in plain English
No formal instructions, no need to frame the question like a lawyer. Just the situation as it is.
-
The platform prepares the ground
Counsl gathers the employee's contract and your relevant policies, asks follow-up questions, and briefs the solicitor — which is what makes the response fast.
-
A qualified solicitor answers
A practising solicitor, not an AI, reviews every query and replies with clear, confidential, practical advice, same working day. Book a call whenever you would rather talk it through.
-
The record keeps itself
Every query and answer is logged automatically in a secure case file, encrypted and held on UK and EU-based servers, never uploaded to a generic AI. No separate paper trail to maintain — and if a matter ever escalates, whether to a tribunal or elsewhere, the platform can produce an anonymised summary of the whole history at the click of a button. In a regulated environment, being able to show what was advised and when is worth a great deal.
More detail on how Counsl works and the platform.
“Counsl felt like having our own in-house lawyer without the cost of hiring one. Being able to message a real solicitor through Teams and get clear, structured advice quickly has been invaluable. They guided us through a full TUPE transfer and a team restructuring — and since bringing them in, far fewer issues escalate.”
What we help with.
- Disciplinary and grievance processes
- Suspensions and investigations
- Handling concerns about clinicians as employment matters
- Disputes between partners, associates and clinicians
- Employment issues arising from referrals and interim restrictions on practice
- Contracts, settlement agreements and confidentiality clauses involving registrants
- Employment status questions for associates, locums and sessional staff
- Sickness absence, capability and stress-related absence
- Performance management of clinical and non-clinical staff
- TUPE on mergers and service changes
- Redundancy and restructuring
- Contracts and policies
- Right to work and sponsorship
- Whistleblowing and protected disclosures
- Flexible working
- Discrimination questions
- Settlement and exit conversations
Handled early, most problems stay small.
The commercial case for Counsl is straightforward.
An employment issue dealt with properly at the moment it arises usually costs a short conversation. The same issue left too long, or handled badly, can cost a tribunal claim, months of management time, and the disruption of losing a clinician you depend on. In a regulated practice there is a further cost: the risk that a poorly handled matter escalates to a regulator, bringing an investigation, a file to prepare, a long period of uncertainty and, potentially, restrictions on someone's practice.
That second escalation route is what makes regulated employers different. Most employers only have the tribunal to worry about. A practice has two doors, and a badly run employment process can open either one.
Getting it right early closes both. A proper investigation, a fair process, decisions taken on advice and recorded properly — that is what keeps a matter small, keeps it in the practice, and keeps it out of both the tribunal and the regulator's inbox.
We are not a litigation firm. We do not take on tribunal claims or fitness-to-practise representation, and we do not make money when things go wrong. Our entire model is to give your practice fast, correct advice on everyday employment matters so that issues are resolved quickly, cheaply and properly.
The best employment tribunal claim is the one that never gets filed. The same is true of a regulatory referral.
Questions from practices.
The practice. Counsl is an employer-side service: we act for the partners, owners and managers who have to make employment decisions, not for individual employees bringing complaints. That is worth being clear about at the outset in any matter involving a clinician.
Yes. Every query is read and answered by a qualified, practising solicitor. The platform handles information-gathering; a real person gives the advice and signs it off. You can book a call whenever you would rather talk.
No. Counsl exists to help you resolve employment issues internally, properly and quickly — which is what keeps most matters from ever becoming a regulatory question. Most concerns involving a clinician are employment matters and should be handled as such. Where you do have obligations of your own, we will help you understand them and act correctly, but our role is to help you deal with the situation, not to escalate it. Where a matter needs specialist regulatory or fitness-to-practise representation, we will say so and can refer you on. See our related article on when GDC and GMC referrals actually apply.
Particularly so. Smaller practices have the same legal obligations as large employers but no HR function to absorb them. Pricing is based on headcount, so a small practice pays accordingly.
Yes — this is one of the more common questions we see in dental and medical practices, and one where the financial consequences of getting it wrong can be significant and retrospective.
All data is encrypted and stored on UK and EU-based servers, in compliance with GDPR. It is never uploaded to a generic AI tool or used to train any AI model — which matters when the underlying subject matter concerns your staff.
No — we are built to help you avoid them. If a matter does escalate to litigation, we will help you understand your position and can refer you on.
More answers — data security, confidentiality, how we differ from a law firm — on the FAQ page.
