How we use the Pulse Survey

The new GCC Strategy reaffirmed our commitment to using evidence and insight to support registrants in their day-to-day work delivering high quality patient care as well as guiding our work as a regulator.

The last registrant survey of all registrants was conducted in Autumn 2020 and, while it was enormously valuable in exploring the views of registrants, it also required a huge investment of time (from both staff and recipients) and it resulted in a “snapshot” of how the profession was feeling at the time.

When we started to think about rerunning a similar survey in 2023, we realised that we wanted a different approach – we wanted to understand what the profession was concerned about, but also how that changed over time. So we introduced the Pulse Survey. Each month, a different cohort of registrants are invited to take part via the monthly newsletter so that, over the year, the whole register will be invited to take part. Each month we look at the survey results and read all the comments to help us keep across the concerns of the profession.

The survey consists of seven questions and, because most of them are multiple choice, the majority of responses are submitted in under 3 minutes (the median is 2 minutes 37 seconds).

Question 1: Confidence in the GCC's statutory duties.

We start by asking some broad questions about your confidence in different aspects of the GCC’s statutory duties and the service we provide.

(all results are for October 2024 to October 2025).

1. On a scale from 1 (not at all confident) to 5 (very confident) how confident are you that the General Chiropractic Council:

The first round of the Pulse survey asked about “being approachable and easy to contact”, and we realised for the second round that these were two separate questions. We acknowledged in our 2026-2030 strategy that:

Our lean workforce impacts on our resilience with key individuals carrying significant responsibility, and we know that sometimes it can be difficult to contact us.

This pressure is something we are tackling head on - we have already introduced a new phone system and are growing the registrations team to make us more resilient and easier to contact.

We know it will take longer for registrants to have confidence that we are approachable, but we hope the focus on collaboration in the new strategy will help us to improve this score.

Question 2: Area of interest (currently preparedness for the Code of Professional Practice).

The second question changes occasionally. It is designed to focus on a particular aspect of chiropractic practice that we feel is important. It is currently looking at your confidence that you are prepared for the start of the Code of Professional Practice.

2. From 1 January 2026, you will be expected to meet the new standards within the Code of Professional Practice. On a scale from 1 (not at all confident) to 5 (very confident), how confident are you that:

These results give us confidence in the work that the profession has already put into preparation for the 1 January, and also that the new standards are not causing undue concern or difficulty for practitioners.

Questions 3 and 4: The health of the whole profession

We are also interested in your view of the whole profession and your work.

3. Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you working in the profession?
4. Overall, would you say you are optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the profession over the next three years?

These figures help us view the “health” of the profession as a whole and, when they change notably, it is a signal that we need to explore what is causing the concern – by looking at the comments (question 7) and speaking to our stakeholders.

Questions 5 and 6: Snapshot of respondents

The final two multiple choice questions ask how long you’ve been on the register, and whether you are male or female, to give us a snapshot of who is responding:

We recognise that it is important to hear from the whole profession, so this result (particularly when compared to the profile of the whole register on the right) highlights we need to do more to hear from people who have been registered for a shorter period of time.

Question 7: Open ended comments

The final question is open-ended and asks:

7. Please share any feedback or comments - about the GCC, the profession, or about the challenges currently facing you as a chiropractor. Your comments will be used to inform our future work and improve our services.

Not everybody completes this question (and we realise this is the question that can take more time) but in the last year the survey was completed 402 times and 180 of those responses included a comment. We read every comment, we categorise them into themes, and they are discussed monthly by the GCC management team.

Occasionally a comment will contain a suggestion for a small change that we can quickly implement – and so we do. One example was a change to the CPD recording portal which meant you could jump between sections, rather than waiting until you’d completed one section before starting the next. Another example is this blog – we were asked in a comment why we were asking the questions we did, and how the results were actually used.

We also keep going back to the comments – if we are starting a new piece of work, or reviewing how we do something, the comments are a gold mine of information that help us to understand where we, and the profession, are now, and where we would like to get to. When we start the work we’ve promised in the 2026-2030 strategy to look at the fee structure for new registrants and those taking a career break (including maternity and paternity leave), the comments we’ve received through the Pulse Survey and other consultations will be invaluable as a starting point to understanding the impact on individuals who have been directly affected.

What’s next for the Pulse Survey?

We’re going to keep running the survey – it has become a very valuable tool for us – and we are grateful to everyone who fills it in.

We are going to look at how we can continue to encourage even more responses – particularly from people who are less likely to complete it.

And finally we also recognise the value of the data we hold – including the Pulse Survey results – to the whole profession, and we plan to explore how we can make the date more widely available (starting with stakeholders) while still maintaining the security of our data and  the anonymity of the responses.