What to Disclose on Your NMC Health and Character Declaration

The previous chapter covered the framework. This chapter covers the specific categories of matters that nurses most commonly ask about, including the grey-area examples where the right disclosure decision isn’t obvious.

The default principle still applies: when in doubt, declare and provide context. What follows is the detail for the categories most often raised.

Criminal record matters

The NMC requires disclosure of:

• Convictions: any criminal court conviction, including motoring convictions in a criminal court (drink-driving, dangerous driving, driving while disqualified).
• Cautions: formal cautions issued by police, including youth cautions.
• Charges currently outstanding in a criminal court.

The NMC does not require disclosure of:

• Fixed-penalty notices for minor motoring offences (speeding, parking, bus lane).
• On-the-spot fines not involving a criminal court.
• Civil court matters unrelated to your professional conduct.

Spent convictions under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act are a complex category. The general rule for healthcare regulators: spent convictions in some categories still need disclosure for nursing because nursing is an exempt profession. When in doubt, declare with context. For example: “Conviction in [year] for [offence]; sentence completed; no subsequent matters.”

Other regulator matters

Disclose any regulatory action by:

• GMC, GDC, GPhC (medical, dental, pharmacy regulators).
• HCPC (allied health professional regulators).
• Social Work England or equivalent in devolved nations.
• Healthcare regulators in other countries if you’ve been registered abroad.

What counts as “action”:

• Conditions on your registration.
• Suspension from a register.
• Removal from a register.
• A current investigation by another regulator.

If you’ve never been registered with any other professional body, there’s nothing to disclose here.

Employer matters

Disclose:

• Current disciplinary investigation about your conduct or fitness.
• Dismissal from a healthcare role on conduct, performance or capability grounds.
• Resignation in lieu of disciplinary process (the “resigned before they could fire me” situation, usually still disclosable).
• Suspension from clinical duties by an employer.

Don’t disclose:

• Routine employer concerns that were addressed informally without formal process.
• Performance reviews that flagged areas for development but didn’t escalate.
• Witness involvement in someone else’s investigation.
• Routine appraisal feedback even when critical.

The dividing line is formal process. If your employer’s HR records show a formal investigation with you as the subject, disclose. If it was an informal conversation, no.

Health matters

This is the largest grey area. Disclose:

• A health condition currently affecting your practice (requiring restricted duties, frequent absence, or accommodation you can’t manage).
• A serious mental health crisis that required hospitalisation or significant treatment.
• Substance dependence or treatment for substance dependence (current or recent).
• A health condition where another professional has expressed concern about your practice.

Don’t disclose:

• Managed chronic conditions that don’t affect practice (controlled hypertension, asthma, IBS, eczema, stable diabetes).
• Mental health support you’ve sought proactively (counselling, therapy, GP-prescribed antidepressants where you’ve remained at work safely).
• Short-term illness that didn’t affect long-term practice.
• Routine reasonable adjustments that have been agreed and are working.

The principle: condition managed = no disclosure; condition unmanaged or impacting practice = disclose.

The grey area: complaints to your employer

A common situation. A complaint was made about your practice (by a patient, family member or colleague). The complaint was investigated. The outcome was no formal action, perhaps with some informal feedback or learning agreed.

Default position: this does not need disclosing. The NMC isn’t trying to capture every event that prompted reflection. Informal complaints resolved without formal action sit below the threshold.

Exception: if the complaint was about a serious matter (patient harm, safeguarding, conduct), even an informal resolution may need disclosing alongside how the matter was handled. The test is whether a reasonable nurse would think the matter could affect fitness to practise.

The grey area: near-miss incidents

A near-miss medication error that you reported. A drug calculation you got wrong that a senior caught. An unsafe practice you flagged about your own work.

These almost never need disclosing. Near-misses are part of professional practice and the reporting of them is what the NMC wants registrants doing. They feature in your reflective accounts as learning events, not in the health and character declaration as fitness concerns.

The exception is a pattern of near-misses serious enough that an employer has formally addressed them with you.

The grey area: historical matters

An old conviction. An employer dismissal from a decade ago. A previous fitness-to-practise concern that was closed without action.

The NMC’s declaration covers the period since your last submission. Historical matters that were already on your record from previous declarations don’t need re-declaring unless something new has happened. New matters (or older matters that were never previously declared) do need declaring.

If you’ve previously declared a historical matter and it remains on file with no change, you don’t need to redeclare it every cycle.

The wording of a disclosure

A disclosed matter takes maybe two or three sentences. The format that works:

“[Year]. [Brief factual description of the matter]. [Outcome]. [Status today]. No subsequent related matters.”

Worked example:

“2023. Caution from Hertfordshire Police following a public order incident outside a venue. Single one-off matter; alcohol-related; I have not had any subsequent matters. No effect on my nursing practice during or since.”

That level of detail is sufficient. You don’t need a long explanation, justification or apology. Facts and resolution, nothing more.

The next chapter moves to the indemnity arrangement, the seventh of the eight requirements.