The Council's Role

The Council's role is to regulate the osteopathic profession in order to protect consumers.

Itdoes this by establishing a regulatory framework for registration that includes scope of practice, qualifications, competencies, and a system for complaints and discipline that will ensure the protection of members of the public.

It also maintains a public register of osteopaths, where members of the publicare able to check whether individual osteopaths are registered and hold a practising certificate. Click here to view the register

The Council and osteopath professional organisations

The Council is an entirely separate organisation from professional associations for osteopaths. Although Council members may also be members of a professional association, their duty as Council members is to act in accordance with the aims, objectives and requirements of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act.

The Council and the osteopath

The Council can consult with the osteopathic profession, and in some circumstances must do so - for example, when specifying scopes of practice and qualifications for each scope.

Its overriding consideration in making decisions, however, is to ensure that it complies with the principal purpose of the HPCA Act - that is, the protection of the health and safety of members of the public by providing mechanisms to ensure that health practitioners are competent and fit to practice. It must therefore be satisfied that any requirements and standards it sets or recognises will fulfill the Act's principal purpose.

The Scope of Practice: Osteopath is:

Registered osteopaths are primary healthcare practitioners who facilitate healing through osteopathic assessment, clinical differential diagnosis, and treatment of dysfunctions of the whole person. Osteopaths use various recognised techniques to work with the body’s ability to heal itself, thereby promoting health and wellbeing. These osteopathic manipulative techniques are taught in the core curriculum of accredited courses in osteopathy. The ultimate responsibility for recognition of practice lies with the Osteopathic Council of New Zealand.

The Council endorses the following philosophy and principles of osteopathic treatment:

• The body is a unit.
• Structure and function are reciprocally interrelated.
• The body possesses self-regulatory mechanisms.
• The body has the inherent capacity to defend itself and repair itself.
• When normal adaptability is disrupted, or when environmental changes overcome the body's capacity for self-maintenance, disease may ensue.
• Movement of body fluids is essential to the maintenance of health.
• The nerves play a crucial part in controlling the fluids of the body.
• There are somatic components to disease that are not only manifestations of disease but also are factors that contribute to mainenance of the diseased state.
• Implicit in these philosophies is the belief that osteopathic intervention has a positive influence on the above.