Good medical practice has been updated. It sets out the standards of patient care and professional behaviour expected of all doctors in the UK, across all specialties, career stages and sectors.
Good medical practice is a framework of professional standards to guide you when you’re caring for patients and working with colleagues.
If you’re a doctor on our register, you’ll already be familiar with many of the principles in the standards, such as working in partnership with patients and keeping your skills up to date. However, it’s important that you familiarise yourself with the updated standards, which came into effect on 30 January 2024.
The standards focus on behaviours and values which support good team work, make everyone feel safe to speak up, and empower doctors to provide quality care. In particular, we've updated five key areas of Good medical practice to help you to:
To help doctors apply Good medical practice 2024, we’ve also refreshed some supporting pieces of guidance.
These don’t establish new or different standards to those in Good medical practice, they explain more about specific areas which doctors often have questions about or where it’s useful to provide extra detail. Like Good medical practice, these additional pieces of guidance came into effect on 30 January 2024.
Our ethical hub contains resources exploring how to apply our professional standards in practice, focusing on areas doctors often ask us about, or have told us they find challenging. The resources are designed to will help doctors address important ethical issues and incorporate good practice into their work.
We work with doctors, physician associates, anaesthesia associates, those they care for and other stakeholders to support good, safe patient care across the UK.
