Once a violation is established, a board has to decide what comes next. It can order education, set the terms of remediation, decide whether a licensee is ready for reinstatement, put monitoring in place, or close the case. Each of those decisions turns on a question the case file rarely answers: was the problem a gap in understanding, or something else? Education ordered for a licensee who already understands the standard is aimed at the wrong problem, and the file alone can’t tell the board which licensee it has.
In Episode 3 of Board Insights, Dr. Ken Pennell, EBAS lead grader, and Dr. Greg Bond, chiropractic specialist with the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners, explain what an assessment result gives a board at that point.
What the Result Speaks To
An EBAS assessment gives the licensee 60 minutes to write about a scenario built for their profession and the category of the violation. Four prompts take the response through the four sections of the published scoring rubric, and two graders with regulatory experience score it. What comes back is a read on whether the licensee can reason through the ethics of the situation. Dr. Pennell, who has graded EBAS essays since 2013 and led the graders since 2020, explains what that tells a board.
The results of the assessment will show in most cases very clearly whether or not the licensee has an understanding of ethics and boundaries. And if they didn’t, what needs to be done in remediation to help them gain a better understanding. And if they did, but they still chose to commit an ethical or boundary violation, what needs to be done to hold them not only accountable, but to make sure that this isn’t going to happen again.
What the Report Contains
The board receives a pass or fail with a score on each of the four sections: introductory opinion statements, consequences, public protection, and solutions. Each is scored from 1 to 4, for 16 points possible, and 12 is a pass. When an order names more than one category, each category is a separate assessment with its own score.
The report carries no recommendation. It says whether the standard was met and where the reasoning held, and it supports the board’s decision without making it.
Where the Result Points
A result that does not pass means the licensee could not reason through the scenario to the standard, and the section scores show where. Dr. Pennell’s word for what follows is remediation, and the section detail gives it a target. A licensee who could not name who was harmed and one who saw the harm but could not say how to resolve it are different cases, and the scores show which one the board has.
A result that passes does less obvious work. The licensee has shown they can reason through the ethics of the situation, so the gap was not understanding, and more education is not the obvious next step. Dr. Bond says a licensee who passes has no plausible deniability. For the board, that makes the next question clearer. It is about accountability and keeping the violation from happening again.
The report itself claims less than that. The assessment is taken after the violation, so it shows how the licensee reasons through the situation now, not what they understood at the time. What it does give the board is a licensee who has shown, in their own writing and against a published standard, that they know where the line is. A later problem is harder to explain as a lack of understanding.
One Piece of the Board’s Evidence
Dr. Bond calls the result “another tool in their arsenal,” and says regulators take it into their overall body of evidence. They already carry a lot of weight when they decide a licensee’s future, and he hopes the result takes some of it off. The result answers one question the rest of the file usually can’t: can this licensee reason through the ethics of a situation like the one that brought them before the board? The decision that follows stays with the board.
About Board Insights: Board Insights is a conversation series from Ethics and Boundaries Assessment Services on how regulatory boards approach ethics, remediation, and disciplinary decision-making. Episode 3 features Dr. Greg Bond, chiropractic specialist with the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners, and Dr. Ken Pennell, EBAS lead grader.
