About Good medical practice

Good medical practice sets out the principles, values, and standards of professional behaviour expected of all doctors, physician associates (PAs) and anaesthesia associates (AAs) registered with us. We use the term ‘medical professionals’ to describe all our registrants who we address directly (as ‘you’) throughout this guidance.  

We work closely with medical professionals, patients and others to develop Good medical practice, so it is a shared agreement of what the professional standards should be. Good medical practice and the more detailed guidance apply to all medical professionals to the extent that they’re relevant to an individual’s practice.

Good medical practice is an ethical framework, which supports medical professionals to deliver safe care to a good standard, in the interests of patients. It doesn’t set standards of knowledge, skills or professional capabilities: these can be found in our education standards.

Good medical practice is divided into four domains to make it easier to navigate. Each domain is equally important in describing what good practice looks like . 

It’s your responsibility to be familiar with Good medical practice and the professional standards it contains, wherever you practise, whatever your field of medicine or practice setting. 

But it isn’t a set of rules. You must use your professional judgement to apply the standards in Good medical practice to your day to day practice. This means working out which of the professional standards are relevant to the specific circumstances you are facing, and using your knowledge, skills and experience to follow them in that context. 

If you do this, act in good faith and in the interests of patients, you’ll be able to explain and justify your decisions and actions.

We use the terms ‘you must’ and ‘you should’ in the following ways.

• ‘You must’ is used for a legal or ethical duty you’re expected to meet (or be able to justify why you didn’t). 
• 'You should’ is used for duties or principles that either:
  • may not apply to you or to the situation you’re currently in, or
  • you may not be able to comply with because of factors outside your control.  

Good medical practice is our core guidance on professional standards. It’s supported by a range of more detailed guidance which expands on some of the standards set out in Good medical practice. 

When we use the term ‘professional standards’ we mean Good medical practice and the more detailed guidance.

Revalidation supports you to reflect on and develop your practice, drives improvements in clinical governance, and gives colleagues and patients confidence that you're keeping up to date. 

You¹  must continuously engage with local clinical governance systems, including participating in annual appraisal, and gathering information in line with our guidance on supporting information for revalidation. This will demonstrate that you’re working in line with the principles, values and standards of care, and behaviour set out in the professional standards. 

The professional standards describe good practice, and not every departure from them will be considered serious. 

When a concern is raised with us about a doctor, physician associate (PA) or anaesthesia associate (AA), we must assess if that individual poses any current and ongoing risk to one or more of the three parts of public protection:

• protecting, promoting and maintaining the health, safety and wellbeing of the public
• promoting and maintaining public confidence in the medical professions, and
• promoting and maintaining proper professional standards and conduct for members of those professions.

We do this by considering the following.

1. How serious the concern is. This includes considering the extent of the any departure from the professional standards expected and/or the impact of a medical professional’s health condition on their ability to practise safely. It also includes taking into account any specific factors that may impact on seriousness, such as premeditated or persistent behaviour, abuse of power, and whether the behaviour or poor performance the concern relates to is an isolated incident or has been repeated.
2. Any relevant context that may impact on risk, for example systems factors and interpersonal factors in the medical professional’s working environment or their role and level of experience.
3. How the medical professional responded to the concern, including evidence of insight and remediation.

Once we’ve assessed the risk, we’ll need to consider if regulatory action may be required in response to the concern. You can read more about our processes and the types of action we might need to take on our fitness to practise webpages.