Medical conditions and reviews

Health professionals completing medical reviews

Driving is a complex task requiring good vision, judgement, perception and physical abilities.


Your role as a health professional is to assess whether the medical condition is likely to affect the person's ability to drive safely and provide advice accordingly.

To support health professionals, the national medical standards, the Assessing Fitness to Drive Guidelines provide fitness to drive criteria and information regarding assessment and management.

Complete a medical report online

We recommend you complete the medical report online.

The fitness to drive process aims to support you in fulfilling your duty of care and public health responsibilities when it comes to managing your patient's fitness to drive. The same responsibilities apply whether you submit the online medical report or choose to fill in a paper medical report.

Using medical report online

There are two versions available within the online form:

  • Medical report for general practitioners and medical specialists, including psychiatrists.
  • Eyesight report for ophthalmologists and optometrists

When completing the medical report online, we recommend using a computer, not a mobile or tablet. Make sure your web browser is up to date.

When you first use the online medical form, we ask you to create an account using your name, Ahpra number, DOB, email address and mobile number, which will be used for multi factor authentication (MFA).

After you have created your account, all subsequent log ins will require you to enter your email address, password and MFA token (sent to your mobile). You will not need to re-enter your Ahpra number or DOB for subsequent log ins, as authentication will be done in the background.

When you log in, you can save reports as drafts and request to view reports you submitted in the last two years.

If we have requested a report for your patient, you should ask them for a copy of our letter which will contain:

  • the Medical Review case number
  • your patient’s reference or licence number (located on top-left corner of the letter sent to your patient).

If you enter these numbers within the online medical report, your patient's personal information will be pre populated and you will not be required to manually enter information like their name, address and date of birth.

When you submit the online medical report, you’ll get a reference number. You can give the reference number and/or a PDF copy of the medical assessment report to your patient. You can also download, save or print the report.

All information submitted in a medical report remains confidential and is not shared with My Health Record.

Document your advice and actions in your patient’s file.
 

 

Medical conditions

Many medical conditions and disabilities, including those associated with general aging, may affect a person's ability to drive, so fitness to drive is an important early consideration when you are assessing and managing your patients. Patients, including family and carers, rely on your advice regarding medical conditions and their impact on safe driving ability.

The primary aim of assessing fitness to drive is to assist your patients to continue to drive safely, independently and legally, and to identify if their safety and/or public safety may be compromised.

Examples of medical conditions that may affect safe driving include:

  • alcohol and other substance misuse
  • blackouts
  • cardiovascular conditions
  • dementia and cognitive impairment
  • diabetes
  • musculoskeletal conditions
  • neurological conditions
  • psychiatric conditions
  • seizures and epilepsy
  • sleep disorders
  • vision and eye disorders.

It is also important to consider medications, associated treatments, and comorbidities.

Our medical conditions page has links to fact sheets on medical conditions and their impact on driving.

For information to support assessment, view the Assessing Fitness to Drive Guidelines,

Conditional licences, licensing decisions and reporting unsafe drivers


Occupational therapists

Occupational therapists support patients to maintain mobility independence.

They can provide advice to patients, carers and families about the impacts of health conditions and disabilities on driving and to make recommendations for management and monitoring.