From Board Insights, Episode 1, featuring Catrice Opichka, Director of CARE Programs, at CRDTS.
The public image of a regulatory board is often shaped by the cases where something goes wrong – a license revoked, a practitioner permanently barred, a disciplinary process that ends a career. Those cases are real, and boards do sometimes reach those outcomes. But they are not the default goal, and they are not what most of the work is designed to produce.
The default goal, in the cases Catrice Opichka sees most often, is restoration. A licensee returning to safe practice, with the board having the evidence it needs to stand behind that decision.
The Default Goal
Opichka describes what boards actually say to her, particularly in severe cases:
“Nobody wants to pull somebody’s license. It’s the last thing the board wants to do. When I speak to boards, it often will come up, especially in a really severe, really big situation, a big case. They’ll say, how can we help this individual? We don’t want to pull their license.”
That posture does not match the public image of regulatory boards. It matches what the work is actually trying to produce. The board exists to protect the public. Pulling a license protects the public in one narrow way – by removing a specific practitioner from practice – but it does not address what made the practitioner unsafe, it does not offer the possibility that the practitioner becomes safe again, and it does not increase the population of competent professionals serving the public. Restoration to safe practice, where it is possible, serves the public interest and the professional’s.
This is not naive. Boards know that some cases cannot be remediated. Serious violations, patterns of dishonesty, cases where the public cannot be made safe with this person in practice – those cases exist and boards handle them accordingly. But most cases that reach a board are not those cases. Most are cases where the board is looking for a path that protects the public without ending the career.
Why the Path Requires Proof
That path requires evidence. A board cannot return a licensee to practice on good faith or on completed coursework alone. The board has to be able to stand behind the decision if a case challenges it, if a similar violation recurs, or if a future board is trying to understand why this licensee was cleared.
Opichka is explicit about this being part of her team’s job:
“Our job is to not only help licensees achieve that, but then prove to the boards with defensible data that they have actually reached safe practice, and we’re comfortable saying to the board that this is something that this individual has the ability to do, and repeat, and make a standard of practice.”
Two things matter in that framing. The program’s goal is not just completing remediation – it is producing evidence. And the standard is not whether the licensee can pass a test once. It is whether they have demonstrated the ability to do safe practice and repeat it as a standard. The evidence has to support that broader claim.
That kind of evidence does not come from attendance records. It does not come from the licensee’s own representation of how they have changed. It has to be independent, structured, and relevant to the specific judgment the violation implicated – which typically means a documented measurement by a third party using scenarios designed to surface the kind of reasoning the case turns on. A board that cannot explain how the evidence was produced, what it measured, and why it supports the conclusion is not operating on defensible footing.
What This Looks Like on the Record
A successful restoration case leaves a file that tells a specific story. The licensee violated a standard. The board ordered remediation. The remediation partner did the work of stabilizing the licensee, delivering relevant content, and preparing them for evaluation. An independent assessment measured the licensee’s reasoning against scenarios relevant to the violation and produced a documented record of how that reasoning held up. The board, on the basis of that record, returned the licensee to practice.
That file is what the board is working toward in every case where restoration is possible. When such a case is later challenged, the record holds up. The board acted on evidence. The evidence was structured and independent. The decision was defensible.
The cases that do end in revocation are the cases where the evidence does not support restoration. Revocation in those cases is not the board’s goal. It is the conclusion the evidence requires.
Where This Leaves the Board
Restoration is what most boards are trying to produce. It is also not automatic. Whether a given case gets there depends on whether the licensee can actually reach safe practice and whether the process generates evidence strong enough for the board to stand behind. The first part is the remediation partner’s work. The second part is measurement’s work. Both have to hold up, and in the cases where they do, boards get to do what they want to do – return a competent professional to safe practice, with a record that explains why.
About Board Insights
Board Insights is a recurring conversation series from EBAS featuring practitioners working in regulatory enforcement, remediation, and licensee oversight. Each episode explores practical questions boards face and the patterns that experienced professionals see across cases.
Watch the full episode with Catrice Opichka
