From Board Insights, Episode 1, featuring Catrice Opichka, Director of CARE Programs, CRDTS
A regulatory board sees the beginning and the end of a remediation case. The board issues the order. Months later, a completed file arrives showing the licensee met the requirements. What happens in between is largely invisible to the board, and much of what happens is not the content of the remediation – it is the state the licensee is in while they move through it.
That invisible middle matters. It affects whether the remediation actually lands, whether the licensee returns to practice prepared to apply what they learned, and whether the process produces the change the board is trying to produce.
The State Licensees Arrive In
Catrice Opichka describes what her team encounters when a licensee begins remediation:
“Licensees oftentimes come to us and they’re not in the greatest space. They’re in the middle of probably the hardest thing they’ve ever had to deal with.”
For most licensees, the violation and the board order represent a rupture. A career built over years is suddenly conditional. Colleagues have found out. Family members have found out. The licensee is processing a real loss while also being asked to do the thoughtful, structured work of a remediation program.
That state is not incidental to remediation. A licensee in real distress is not in a position to absorb material well. They are defensive and reactive, and their engagement with content is often shallow. A remediation plan that ignores this reality is designing for a licensee who does not exist.
The Buffer Role
Opichka’s team describes their function in terms that are not typical of how education organizations are usually framed:
“It takes us going through some of the education for them to understand, okay, this is not an ideal situation. The board is not the bad guy. They’re really looking out for public protection. We are a remediation and reeducation organization, but really we are counseling these individuals during the hardest time of their professional life.”
The formal role of a remediation organization is teaching content. The real role includes a significant amount of support work alongside the teaching.
Part of that support is practical. Licensees often do not understand what the process looks like, what outcomes are possible, or what their options are at each stage. Giving them accurate information about the system they are inside lowers the temperature. Part of it is relational. A licensee in the middle of disciplinary action often has no one to talk to who understands the system and does not have a stake in the outcome. The remediation organization holds that space.
This is what Opichka means by “link or buffer between the licensee and the board.” The licensee and the board are both trying to reach the same outcome – the licensee back in safe practice – but they often cannot communicate directly because of the adversarial structure of the disciplinary process. The remediation organization connects them.
Reframing the Board
One of the most consistent things licensees need, in Opichka’s experience, is a reframe of how they see the board. The default arrival mindset is adversarial – the board is the entity that has disciplined them, and remediation is the hoop the board is making them jump through. That framing produces minimum compliance and shallow engagement. Her team spends time helping licensees understand that the board is doing the job the public has given it – protecting public safety – and that the licensee’s return to practice depends on the board being able to say, with evidence, that the public is safe with this person practicing again.
Licensees who arrive at that reframe take the remediation more seriously and complete it more effectively. Licensees who do not often move through the system without absorbing what the remediation was designed to produce.
Why This Belongs With Remediation Partners
None of this work is what an assessment does. An assessment measures reasoning against a scenario. It does not stabilize a licensee, reframe their relationship with the board, or walk them through the human experience of disciplinary action.
Those functions belong with remediation partners. They are real, they matter for outcomes, and they are what distinguishes effective remediation programs from programs that just deliver content.
For boards, the practical implication is not about softening consent orders or relaxing standards. It is about recognizing that the order is going to be delivered to a human being in the hardest professional moment of their life, and that the quality of the remediation organization receiving that person affects whether the order produces the outcome the board intended. The invisible middle of a remediation case is largely the remediation partner’s work. Boards that factor that into how they select partners, not just into what they require, tend to see the difference on the back end.
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
