Professionalism & Professional Standards for Doctors

A 2.5-hour course on medical ethics for GMC-registered doctors, built around the GMC's Good Medical Practice 2024 and the law that governs consent, capacity and confidentiality in the UK. It moves from the four founding principles through to a full worked ethical dilemma, staying close to situations doctors actually face rather than abstract theory.

Most serious GMC concerns have an ethical question at their centre, a consent that was really just a form, a confidence shared without proper basis, a record that reads badly to someone who wasn't in the room. This course teaches the standard doctors are actually held to, not a generic ethics refresher.

You'll finish able to obtain consent to the Montgomery standard, assess capacity correctly under the Mental Capacity Act, judge confidentiality disclosure decisions with confidence, meet the duty of candour properly, and work through a genuine ethical dilemma using a method you can defend afterwards, not just describe in an interview.

The course runs across five modules of unequal length, weighted toward the areas that generate the most complaints and regulatory scrutiny:

• The four principles of medical ethics and where they sit in Good Medical Practice 2024
• Consent, the Montgomery standard, and capacity under the Mental Capacity Act
• Confidentiality, the duty of candour, and documentation
• Probity, raising concerns, and communicating with patients and colleagues
• A structured method for ethical dilemmas, end-of-life ethics, and a full worked case

Any doctor registered with the GMC, at any career stage, in any setting. Equally suited to revalidation and appraisal, and to doctors who already have a specific consent, confidentiality, or honesty concern to address. The same standards apply to physician associates and anaesthesia associates regulated by the GMC. Part of the wider CrownEthics library of CPD-accredited courses for UK healthcare professionals.

This course stands on its own. But depending on which of the three situations above is actually yours, one of these pairs with it better than buying either alone:

• A concern has already been raised about you — add Fitness to Practise: What You Need to Know. This course teaches the ethical standard you're being measured against; that one explains the actual process, timeline, and what happens next, so you're not guessing at both at once.
• You need to show a regulator, appraiser, or employer that you've genuinely changed — add Remediation — Demonstrating Change. It takes the ethical standard this course teaches and turns it into an evidenced remediation package, matched cause to remedy, not just a list of certificates.
• You need to write a reflective account about a specific incident — add Reflection — Learning from Your Practice. It teaches the structured reflective method (Gibbs-based) that appraisers and panels actually expect, applied to exactly the kind of consent, confidentiality, or honesty scenario this course covers.
• You want to understand why the original concern happened at all — add Insight — Understanding Your Mistakes, which goes deeper on identifying the real underlying cause than this course has room for.

Every course above is standalone and priced individually, so buy only the pairing that matches your actual situation rather than the whole set.