Blog
Changing the narrative on suicide and revisioning nurse regulation
In September last year, on World Suicide Prevention Day 2025, colleagues on the team wrote a powerful blog piece called Revisioning the Narrative.
World Suicide Prevention Day this year continues the theme of changing the narrative on suicide, which is so aligned with our work.
By: Anna van der Gaag, Pauline Milne and Liz Dudeney
In September last year, on World Suicide Prevention Day 2025, colleagues on the team wrote a powerful blog piece called Revisioning the Narrative. World Suicide Prevention Day this year continues the theme of changing the narrative on suicide, which is so aligned with our work. We are well underway now, and have heard from many nurses who want to work with us over the coming months and years.
One part of this programme, which we call Study 5, is looking at complaints about nurses and how the experience of a complaints process impacts on their lives. As with all areas of the work, we are focusing on women nurses and those from the global majority. In March 2025, 88% of registered nurses were women and almost one third (32.5%) on the register were from the global majority (NMC Fitness to Practice Report, 2025).
Local and national complaints processes are there to protect the public from harmful practice, to hold nurses accountable, and to help maintain consistent standards of patient care across different settings. Complaints about nurses come from patients, family members, other health professionals and managers. A very small number of these result in a sanction, such as suspension or conditions on practice, for example when the quality of patient care has been questioned or a medicines error may have occurred. An even smaller number result in what is called ‘strike off’ the register of nurses who are qualified to practice, almost always because the nurse has been shown to cause harm to patients. In 2024-25, the nursing regulator removed 278 nurses from practice. This represents 0.04% of the 788,074 nurses on their register. But regardless of outcome, the complaints process has been shown to precipitate high levels of distress and suicidality (Jones Berry 2016, Horsfall, 2014). Previous research has found that even where a complaint is not upheld, the experience can have devastating consequences for the nurse, and serious impact on family, colleagues and patient care (Biggar et al 2023).
What we want to understand through Study 5 is much more about the relationship between having a complaint made about you and suicidality and distress. This is not to diminish the importance of accountability and action when there is proven poor or harmful practice, but to recognise and research the impact of the complaints process on nurses themselves. We will look at the cultural, organisational systems and structures around nurses which can hurt or help to make, or break, good delivery of care. We plan to use a UK wide online survey, and in-depth interviews to do this. We are working with nurses who have lived experience and who can help us to identify ways in which complaints handling could be revisioned and improved. We will be learning from initiatives elsewhere, for example, the restorative just culture work in NHS Trusts like Merseycare, and Sidney Dekker in Australia (Dekker 2025). All of this learning aims to allow us to look with fresh eyes at the current system and where it could be transformed, revisioning complaints handling for the public good. Revisioning is about making changes to improve and challenge current ways of doing things. Aligned with our values and our vision across all our projects, we want this work to help reduce stigma, raise awareness and change the narrative on suicide.
If you would like to help with this study, please get in contact with us here.