Writing more than 2,000 years ago, the great Greek dramatist Euripides provided advice that is strikingly relevant today. Seeking balance in our personal lives is a worthy goal, especially given all of the forces in today's hyper-busy, hyper-connected world that tend to drive us to distraction and extremes. But his words also hold a great truth for medical regulation, which requires us to constantly seek balance in how, where, and when we apply remediation or discipline for health care professionals whose competency is in question. In this issue of the Journal, two articles from authors in New Zealand and Canada help us better understand the principles of “right touch regulation,” a regulatory approach in which health care practitioners can maintain and improve their professional competency through feedback and self-correction. These systems strongly rely on evidence-based standards, and are gaining momentum in the global regulatory community. If implemented, right touch regulation has the potential to move us toward a more preventive system of regulation, in which competency issues are detected and corrected before they rise to a level in which regulators must take disciplinary action. For this system to work, though, we must be vigilant in ensuring that our notions of competency are well defined and up to date— and that means taking into account rapid changes in medicine, which create a constantly evolving environment for competency assessment. A third article, from authors at the National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners, offers an updated path for competency assessment that will be implemented this fall and fits in well with this growing need. The COMLEX-USA Level 3 examination blueprint, designed for osteopathic physicians, provides a good example of how medical examiners can update their assessment systems to stay ahead of the curve of change. Further, the new blueprint will meet the evolving needs of the state medical boards and institutional credentialing entities. The blueprint focuses on “knowledge, skills, experiences, attitudes, values, and/or behaviors that are observable and measurable and can be directly assessed in a reliable manner”— all factors that can help medical regulators make sound, balanced decisions as they continue their work in protecting the public and ensuring quality in medical practice, keeping our patients safe.