Student professionalism and fitness to practise

Being a medical student means joining a trusted profession. A profession which requires a high standard of behaviour at all times. This content has been created to help you - the medical student - meet those standards, and help your medical school provide a consistent, supporting environment.

Guidance for medical students

Achieving good medical
practice

Cover of achieving good medical practise
 

This guidance outlines the standards expected of you – both inside and outside medical school – and shows how the principles and values of Good medical practice apply to you as a student.


Supplementary information about protected cautions and convictions in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Guidance for medical schools

Professional behaviour and
fitness to practise

Cover of professional behaviour and fitness to practise
 

This document gives guidance to medical schools and educators on managing processes for professionalism concerns and fitness to practise. Medical students may also find this guidance useful, to understand how their institution deals with these issues


View our latest student professionalism competition, which we run together with the Medical Schools Council.

Resources & further information

 

Back
The expert view

Watch this video to hear more about professionalism and our guidance from experts at your medical school.

Guidance in practice

Student scenarios

These fictional case studies will help you see how Achieving good medical practice and Professional behaviour and fitness to practise can be applied to real life scenarios.

Topics include social media use, personal health, serious misconduct, working in isolated environments, and repeated low level concerns

Thought pieces

Some areas of our guidance have generated discussion among medical schools and their students.

Read our thoughts on these discussions, and contributions from medical school staff considering the guidance in day-to-day situations.

Myths and questions

We have put together a myth buster and FAQs to help students and medical schools understand the guidance.

Good practice examples

Examples submitted by medical educators

We asked medical schools to tell us what steps they have taken towards implementing the guidance, any difficulties, and how they had communicated it to their students.

Professionalism in teaching

How is professional behaviour taught at medical school? And what are the best ways to teach professionalism to medical students? We collaborated with The Point of Care Foundation, who produced 10 recommendations for how this could be done.

Student professionalism competition

Student professionalism competition

Our student competition for 2020 is now open.

This year our joint competition with the Medical Schools Council focuses on the importance of good communication.

Enter by 27 September 2020 to be in with a chance of winning up to £300.

 

Further reading

The guidance on this page is designed to help medical students achieve the standards expected in Good medical practice, and help medical schools implement the corresponding requirements set out in Promoting excellence.

Our good medical practice guidance cover image
Good medical practice
Good medical practice sets out the principles of good practice which all doctors must be familiar with. It is the foundation on which the rest of our guidance is built.
Read the full guidance
Doctors in training learning on an educational dummy
Promoting excellence
This document sets out the standards for the delivery of medical education and training. These standards have patient safety, quality of care, and fairness at their heart.