One of the best things you can do when preparing for a hearing is to start a timeline.
Not only does this enable you to see and remember key facts that have happened along the way but also it helps you to work out which areas you need more clarity about.
A simple table can be used – example given below.
Keep it simple – do it in date order (most recent date first ) and work back from that.
Include employment dates, and local disciplinary dates, dates of first notification of referral and communications with NMC, Add to the timeline any meetings you had with the employer or the person who referred you. Add in emails to and from the NMC and a brief summary of what was discussed and any outcomes or action points.
A mistake that people make is they expect that the NMC will peice together information but often information is screened and handed over from one case officer to another, investigating officer etc and some things can get lost in transit. Also not everyone looking at the evidence will be qualified in analysing it, they may not understand the relevance of a trust meeting for example, or that you only worked on the unit for a brief time before the issues arose. The information may be clear to you because it happened to you but to someone not involved may be easy to miss things. Also the NMC teams get so much paperwork to review what they think is important to focus on may not be what you want them to consider.
By putting it all in a timeline it is clear for the investigating officers to see and the legal teams and also any panel that may have to review the evidence, You can then use your timeline as a reference point to guide the panel to key aspects when the time is right,