Struck Off: Can You Still Work in Healthcare in Another Role?

Written and reviewed by Dr Shehzad Iqbal, MBBS, MRCS, MRCGP, Postgraduate Certificate in Healthcare Law and Ethics · Updated 5 November 2026

What you cannot do after being struck off

A striking-off or erasure order removes your name from your regulator’s register. Each regulator states what that means in its own words:

• NMC: a striking-off order is its highest sanction and prevents you from working as a registered nurse, midwife or nursing associate;
• GMC: erasure by a tribunal means you cannot work as a doctor in the UK for at least five years, and the GMC withdraws your licence to practise;
• HCPC: the designated titles, such as physiotherapist, paramedic or dietitian, may only be used by people on its register.

The protected title matters as much as the job itself. Under article 44 of the Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001 it is an offence, with intent to deceive, to claim falsely to be on the register or to use a title you are not entitled to. Article 39 of the Health Professions Order 2001 makes the same use of an HCPC designated title an offence. In practice this means your CV, your email signature, your social media profile and the way you introduce yourself to a patient or a colleague must not suggest that you are still registered.

Unregistered roles in healthcare

A striking-off order is about the register. The regulators’ own pages describe what the order stops you doing as a registrant; none of the pages we read sets out a list of unregistered healthcare jobs that are closed to you. Whether you can take a role such as a healthcare assistant, a support worker, a clinical administrator or a researcher is therefore decided by three other things:

1. The barred lists. If the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) places you on a barred list, it is a criminal offence to engage, or seek to engage, in regulated activity. Your regulator is a “keeper of a register” and has the power to refer you to DBS.
2. The employer’s decision. DBS describes a check as one part of recruitment; the decision to appoint is the employer’s. A barred list check is only available for a role that is regulated activity.
3. The facts of your case. An employer will ask what led to the order. A case about record keeping reads very differently, to a recruiter, from a case about harm to a patient.

DBS also says that its decision does not overrule other restrictions a professional body may place on you. A DBS decision not to bar you is not permission to act as if you were registered.

In Scotland, barring for regulated work with protected adults is run by Disclosure Scotland, not DBS.

Telling employers you were struck off

An employer can check the register: a current NMC sanction, for example, shows on a search of the NMC register. The order can be found whether or not you mention it. The safer course is to say so plainly, in your own words, when an application asks about regulatory history, and to explain what you have done since.

There is a second reason to be open. When you later apply for restoration, the NMC panel chair asks whether you have claimed to be a registered nurse, midwife or nursing associate since you knew you had been struck off. A job application that blurred the point would become fresh evidence about your honesty. Our guide to GMC probity explains why honesty is judged so strictly in a fitness to practise case.

Working abroad after being struck off

Another country’s regulator will ask for proof of your UK registration history. The GMC sends its certificate of good standing only to another medical regulatory authority, and the certificate shows whether your registration has been restricted, suspended or revoked, with relevant fitness to practise information. The GMC says it discloses fitness to practise sanctions indefinitely, including restrictions that are no longer active. Moving abroad does not leave a UK erasure behind.

Coming back to the register

Every regulator named here sets a waiting period before you can apply to come back:

• GMC: not until five years after the date of erasure; after a refusal, not for another 12 months; after two refusals, the tribunal can suspend your right to apply indefinitely;
• NMC: five years from the date the striking-off order took effect; after a refusal, not for another year;
• HCPC: five years after removal; one application in any 12 months; after two refusals the panel may stop further applications;
• GDC: five years after the date of erasure, for complaints received on or after 31 July 2006;
• GPhC: five years after the removal date.

The hearing for a restoration looks at what you have done in those years. Our guides to GMC restoration after erasure and what an NMC striking-off order means cover the hearings themselves.

Remediation and CPD while you are off the register

Five years is a long gap, and the panel will want to see how you used it. Evidence that carries weight is evidence that answers the concern behind the order: what you now understand about it, what you have changed, and how you have kept your knowledge current. A written reflection in your own words, linked to dated course certificates, shows insight and remediation in a form a panel can check:

• public trust after a serious finding: Rebuilding Trust of Patients, Colleagues, Public, and Healthcare Regulator;
• a dishonesty finding: Probity for Healthcare Professionals;
• the written account: Module on Insight and Module on Reflection.

The same certificates count as CPD, so they are useful in an unregistered role as well as in the restoration bundle.

Our courses after a striking-off order, and for CPD

Courses that sit beside it

Bulk Buy covers the £79 courses: 3 for £200, 5 for £300, 10 for £500. Not sure what to take? Book a free 15-minute call or see which course do I need.

Guides that help

The CPD courses linked from this guide, Rebuilding Trust of Patients, Colleagues, Public, and Healthcare Regulator, Module on Insight, Probity for Healthcare Professionals and Module on Reflection, are by Probity & Ethics, written by Dr Shehzad Iqbal, CPD certified and accredited by The CPD Certification Service (provider no. 13197) and offered since 2020.

Questions and answers