Welcome to Professionalism & Professional Standards for Doctors

Most fitness to practise concerns are not about a doctor’s clinical knowledge. They are about how a doctor behaved: a culture they allowed to sour, a concern they should have raised and didn’t, a colleague they let down, a boundary that blurred without anyone noticing until it mattered. This is the territory this course covers.

If you’ve already taken our Ethics & Ethical Standards for Doctors course, you’ll notice this one is different in kind, not just in name. That course is about reasoning through a hard decision: consent, confidentiality, honesty, dilemmas with no clean answer. This course is about something else: the pattern of conduct you carry every day, with colleagues, in your workplace, and increasingly, online. It draws on Good Medical Practice 2024’s Domain 1 (staying competent), Domain 3 (colleagues, culture and safety), and the conduct side of Domain 4 (trust, earned through everyday behaviour rather than a single decision).

By the end of this course you will be able to

  1. Recognise when a task or situation sits outside your competence, and act on it properly
  2. Delegate and supervise safely, and keep continuity of care intact when handing over
  3. Build and protect a respectful, fair working culture, and challenge discrimination when you see it
  4. Raise a concern about a colleague or system through the right channel, at the right time
  5. Meet the conduct standards that protect trust day to day, including online
  6. Recognise your own wellbeing as a professional responsibility, not a private matter

Who this is for

Any doctor registered with the GMC, at any career stage. It is especially relevant if you supervise or lead a team, if a workplace conduct or culture concern has been raised, or if you’re preparing for appraisal and want CPD that covers Domains 1 and 3 properly rather than folding everything into ethics content alone.

Please read this firstThis course explains professional standards and the reasoning behind them. It is not legal advice and does not replace representation. If a concern has been raised about your conduct, speak to your defence organisation before you act. This course teaches the standard. It doesn’t advise on your specific case.

Structure How this course is organised +

Five modules, four knowledge checks, and a final 15-question assessment. Score 80% to unlock your certificate.

  • Module 1 — competence, currency, delegation, and continuity of care
  • Module 2 — workplace culture, discrimination, raising concerns, and fair leadership
  • Module 3 — the conduct standard day to day, workplace boundaries, and records as discipline
  • Module 4 — online conduct and wellbeing as a professional duty
  • Module 5 — leadership, where conduct meets ethics, the 2024 changes, and a full worked case

Around 2.5 hours in total, worth 2.5 CPD hours.

Pairs with Ethics & Ethical Standards for Doctors (GMC) +

These two courses are designed as a pair covering all four GMP domains between them, without duplicating each other. If you haven’t taken the Ethics course yet, this one still stands alone — but together they give a genuinely complete picture of what Good Medical Practice actually expects.