Gateways guidance: 3.1 Good Medical Practice and fitness to practise
The GMC aims to ensure that patients are able to trust doctors with their lives and health. The GMC uses the phrase ‘fitness to practise’ to refer to the package of qualities that makes it appropriate for a doctor to be registered with a licence to practise. Good Medical Practice sets out the principles on which good practice is founded. These principles apply to all doctors. Consequently, serious or persistent failure to follow Good Medical Practice will put a doctor's registration at risk.
The guidance in Good Medical Practice is arranged under the following seven headings.
Good clinical care
Doctors must practise good standards of clinical care, practise within the limits of their competence, and make sure that patients are not put at unnecessary risk.
Maintaining good medical practice
Doctors must keep up to date with developments in their field and maintain their skills.
Relationships with patients
Doctors must develop and maintain successful relationships with their patients.
Working with colleagues
Doctors must work effectively with colleagues.
Teaching and training
If doctors have teaching responsibilities, they must develop the skills, attitudes and practices of a competent teacher.
Probity
Doctors must be honest.
Health
Doctors must not allow their own health or condition to put patients and others at risk.
The GMC’s ‘Fitness to Practise procedures’ are used to consider doctors who seriously or persistently fail to follow the guidance. The overwhelming majority of doctors will never have a fitness to practise referral. In this context the issue of 'fitness', while occasionally relating to health, is more often to do with attitude, behaviour and clinical competence.
The advisory guidance offered here is consistent with the principles of Good Medical Practice. However, medical students are not registered by the GMC and therefore are not subject to its Fitness to Practise procedures. The development of students’ knowledge and clinical skills and their fitness to practise are considered through the medical schools’ procedures.