Consultation on explanatory guidance

Good Medical Practice (2006) is our current core guidance for doctors. We review it every five years to make sure it is up to date and reflects what doctors and patients think are the important principles and values of good care.

Good Medical Practice is supported by a range of shorter statements which explain some of the principles in Good Medical Practice in more detail – we call these pieces the ‘explanatory guidance’. You can read all our current guidance on our website at www.gmc-uk.org/guidance.

On this page you can find out about:

• The explanatory guidance consultation
• What we are doing now
• Where to go for further information

What happened during the consultation

The consultation on explanatory guidance was part of the ongoing review of Good Medical Practice. Thank you to everyone who took part. The consultation was open to anyone and provided a chance for doctors, patients and the public, and anyone else with an interest in these issues to have their say on the draft guidance.

Respondents were able to access each piece of guidance and accompanying questions on our consultation website. We also provided PDF versions of the guidance (including in Welsh) and a writable PDF of the questions.

The pieces of explanatory guidance we consulted on were:

• Acting as a witness in legal proceedings (pdf)
• Delegation and referral (pdf)
• Financial and commercial arrangements and conflicts of interest (pdf)
• Ending your professional relationship with a patient (pdf)
• Maintaining boundaries which now splits into: (pdf)
  1. Intimate examinations and chaperones
  2. Maintaining a professional boundary between you and your patient
  3. Sexual behaviour and your duty to report
• Personal beliefs and medical practice (pdf)
• Reporting criminal and regulatory proceedings within and outside the UK (pdf)
• Doctors’ use of social media (pdf)
• Taking up and ending appointments (pdf)

The 8 week consultation ran from Wednesday 18 April 2012 to Wednesday 13 June 2012.

Next steps

Now that the consultation has closed, we are reviewing all the feedback we received and will report back to our Working Group with the findings and recommendations about whether, and if so how, to change the guidance we consulted on. We will publish a document summarising the feedback we received and how we used it when we publish the new, final draft of Good Medical Practice and explanatory guidance by the end of 2012.

Do you want to know more?

If you have any further questions about the consultation or our processes, please contact us by email at gmp2012@gmc-uk.org or by telephone on 020 7189 5404.

You can also sign up to our email update to stay in touch with the review.