Probity & Ethics
For organisations · Licences and member access · CPD UK certified
Course licences for healthcare organisations
and member access schemes for defence organisations, insurers and medico-legal firms
The CPD Certification Service
Provider No. 13197
At a glance
- Two models
- Course licences, or a member access scheme
- Seat access
- Twelve months from the day it is assigned
- You choose
- Only the courses you select are opened
- Reporting
- Who completed what, and when, exportable
- Pricing
- Quoted against volume; no platform fee
- Certification
- The CPD Certification Service, Provider No. 13197
In short
What this is
Probity & Ethics supplies CPD-certified courses in ethics, professionalism, probity and professional boundaries to organisations that employ, engage, represent or teach healthcare professionals.
Organisations come to us for two different reasons. Some want their people to have worked through the standards their regulator publishes before a concern arises. Others are responding to something that has already happened and need structured, certificated work they can assign straight away.
We are an independent education provider. We are not a regulator, a law firm or a defence organisation, and we are not affiliated with, accredited by or endorsed by any UK healthcare regulator.
How it works commercially
The two models
Which one we propose depends on your relationship with the professionals concerned. We will say which we think fits when you get in touch, rather than leaving you to work it out.
You buy seats
Course licences
You buy a block of seats at a rate below the public price and assign them to named people as you need to. You choose which courses are opened, you see what has been completed, and you hold the record.
- Seats bought in a block, priced against volume
- Only the courses you select are opened on your account
- Twelve months of access from the day a seat is assigned
- A dated CPD certificate for every completion
- An exportable record of who completed what, and when
Suits organisations that employ, engage or teach the professional: trusts, private providers and dental groups, universities, and recruitment agencies.
Your members buy
Member access scheme
You take no seats and pay nothing. Your organisation is given its own code, and your members use it to buy courses for themselves at a reduced rate. There is no seat administration and no record for you to hold.
- No purchase and no cost to your organisation
- A code that belongs to you, with its own rate
- Members buy the courses they need, when they need them
- Nothing to administer and no seats to allocate
- Each member’s work stays between that member and us
Suits organisations that represent or advise the professional: medical defence organisations, indemnity insurers, and medico-legal law firms.
Seat rates and member rates are quoted against the number of people involved, so we do not publish them. Ask us for a figure and we will come back with one.
Who we work with
Six kinds of organisation
The arrangement that fits depends on whether you employ the professional or represent them. Each of these has its own anchor, so it can be linked to directly.
Locum and healthcare recruitment agencies
Agencies place clinicians into settings where the client organisation carries the governance risk. Where a candidate needs structured work on professional boundaries, probity or record keeping before or during a placement, a licence lets you assign that work immediately rather than waiting for the candidate to arrange it themselves. Completion is dated and certificated, so it can be shown to the client that asked for it.
Universities and medical, dental and nursing schools
Students meet professional standards long before they meet a regulator. Faculties use licensed seats in two ways: as preparation before a first clinical placement, and as structured work for a student going through a fitness to practise process, where a committee wants evidence that the student has engaged with the standard in question rather than simply been told about it.
NHS foundation trusts
Where a trust is responding to a conduct concern, a pattern across a department or a recommendation from a review, licensed seats give clinical governance and medical directorate teams something specific to assign. Each completion produces a dated CPD certificate that sits in the individual’s file and in your own record of what was put in place and when.
Private hospitals, clinics and dental groups
A single conduct allegation against one clinician can occupy a private provider for months and reach patients, insurers and the local reputation of the practice. Licensed seats let you build ethics, probity and boundaries training into induction and into annual appraisal, so that expectations are set before anything goes wrong. Training of this kind does not decide any individual case. What it does is support a governance and risk framework and produce documented evidence that the organisation engaged with the standard proactively rather than only after a complaint.
Medical defence organisations and indemnity insurers
Defence organisations and insurers already point members towards structured ethics and remediation work; several send people to us. A member access scheme formalises that. Your members get a discounted rate through a code that belongs to your organisation, you carry no cost and no seat administration, and the work a member does stays between that member and us unless they choose to share the certificate with you.
Medico-legal and regulatory law firms
Firms acting in regulatory and fitness to practise matters routinely advise clients to undertake remediation, then have to help them find something credible. A member access scheme gives you a named route to hand a client, at a rate below the public price, without the firm buying anything or holding any record of who used it.
What a licence covers
What you get
The practical detail your governance, finance and procurement people will ask for.
Courses you choose
You tell us which of the courses your people should have access to, and only those are opened on your account. A licence does not have to cover the whole catalogue.
Named learner accounts
Each seat is assigned to one named person. They set their own password and work through the material privately, on any device, at their own pace.
Twelve months from assignment
A seat runs for twelve months from the day it is assigned to a person. Courses are self-paced, so most people finish well inside that.
A dated CPD certificate
Every completed course issues a CPD certificate carrying the person’s name, the course, the CPD hours and the date. They download it themselves, and it is also available on your account.
Completion reporting
You see who has been assigned a seat, what they have completed and when. The record can be exported so it can be filed with whatever governance or audit process asked for it.
No platform charge
There is no set-up fee, no annual platform licence and no minimum term. You pay for seats, and the rate depends on how many you take.
What is seen, and by whom
Confidentiality
Courses bought by an individual are confidential. Courses provided on an organisation’s licence are not, and the person taking them is told so before they begin.
Most people who come to us directly are in the middle of something difficult, and a great deal of the trust they place in us rests on knowing that we do not tell their employer, their regulator or their defence organisation that they have enrolled. That does not change.
A licensed seat works differently, because the organisation paying for it needs to know it was used. So anyone redeeming a seat is shown a single plain sentence at the point of redemption, before the course opens, saying that the organisation which provided the seat will be able to see which courses they complete and when. They accept it there, not in a set of terms nobody reads.
What an organisation sees is limited to assignment, completion and date, together with the certificate. It does not extend to how long somebody spent on a course, what they wrote in a reflective exercise, or anything they say to us directly.
What can be licensed
The courses
Self-paced online courses in ethics, professionalism, probity, professional boundaries, insight and reflection, communication, record keeping and fitness to practise, each carrying 1.5 to 2.5 CPD hours and a dated certificate.
Each regulator page lists the concerns that regulator commonly raises and the courses written to its standards. Browse the full catalogue, or see the facilitated days for organisations.
From enquiry to first seat
How it works
Four steps. Most organisations get from a first email to an open account inside a fortnight.
Tell us what you need
An email setting out roughly how many people, which professions and what has prompted the enquiry is enough to start. We will say honestly if we are not the right fit.
See it on a call
A short video call, usually half an hour. We walk through two courses in full, show the account an administrator would use, and answer whatever your governance or procurement people need answered.
Agree the terms
We quote a seat rate against the volume you expect, and confirm the practical points in writing: which courses, how the invoice is raised, and how learner data is handled.
Set up and assign
We open your account with the courses you have chosen. You assign seats to named people as and when you need them, and the twelve months starts for each person on the day they are assigned.
Common questions
Questions organisations ask
How does an organisation buy courses for its people?
There are two arrangements. Under a course licence you buy a block of seats at a rate below the public price and assign them to named people. Under a member access scheme you take no seats and pay nothing; your members buy at a discounted rate using a code that belongs to your organisation.
Which one suits you depends on whether you employ or engage the professionals concerned, or represent and advise them. We will say which we think fits when you get in touch.
What does a seat include, and how long does it last?
A seat gives one named person access to the courses you have opened on your account, with a dated CPD certificate for each one they complete. Access runs for twelve months from the day the seat is assigned to that person.
Can somebody go back over a course, or take it again for a new certificate?
Going back over it, yes, without limit. A seat runs for twelve months from the day it is assigned, and for the whole of that period the person can return to the course as often as they like, including after they have completed it and downloaded their certificate. Revisiting the material costs nothing and uses nothing.
Taking it again for a new certificate is a separate thing. A certificate carries the date the course was completed, so a certificate with a current date on it means a fresh completion, and that needs a new seat assigned to that person. In short: rereading is free for as long as the seat runs; a newly dated certificate costs a seat.
Can we choose which courses our people get?
Yes. You tell us which courses to open and only those appear on your account. Organisations commonly select a core set around ethics, professionalism, probity and professional boundaries, and add others where a specific concern has been raised.
What will we be able to see about our people’s progress?
Who has been assigned a seat, which courses they have completed, and the date of each completion, together with the certificate. The record can be exported for your own files.
We do not report on how long somebody spent, what they wrote in a reflective exercise, or anything they tell us directly. That belongs to them.
Do our people know that we can see their completions?
Yes, and this matters to us. Anyone redeeming a seat on an organisation’s licence is told in plain words, at the point they redeem it and before they begin, that the organisation which provided the seat will be able to see which courses they complete and when. They accept that before the course opens.
Courses bought by an individual out of their own pocket remain confidential. We do not tell an employer, a regulator or a defence organisation that somebody has enrolled.
What is the difference between a licence and a member access scheme?
A licence is a purchase: you buy seats, you assign them, and you can see what was completed. A member access scheme is a route: your members buy for themselves at a reduced rate, you pay nothing and hold no record.
Licences suit employers, providers, agencies and faculties. Member access schemes suit defence organisations, insurers and law firms, who represent professionals rather than employ them.
What does it cost?
Seat rates depend on volume, so we quote rather than publish a price. Tell us roughly how many people you expect to cover and we will come back with a figure and what it includes.
There is no set-up fee, no platform charge and no minimum term.
Are the courses certified, and by whom?
Every course is independently assessed and certified by The CPD Certification Service, under Provider No. 13197, and carries between 1.5 and 2.5 CPD hours.
No UK healthcare regulator approves, accredits or endorses courses from any provider, including us, and none keeps an approved list. Independent certification is an external check on the material and a dated, verifiable record. It is a different thing from regulatory approval, and we are careful not to describe it as one.
Do you deliver live sessions as well as online courses?
Yes. Facilitated days run live by video link for a group from a single organisation, shaped around the standards you want covered and arranged around your rota rather than a published calendar. Those are described on the courses for healthcare organisations page.
Many organisations combine the two: a facilitated day for a department, and licensed seats for individual follow-up.
Talk to us
Getting in touch
An enquiry does not commit you to anything, and we will tell you plainly if we are not the right fit for what you need.
Say roughly how many people, which professions, and what has prompted the enquiry. That is enough for us to come back with something useful.
A demonstration
Half an hour by video link. Two courses walked through in full, the administrator account shown, and your questions answered.
Probity & Ethics trades as Harley MedAesthetics Ltd, 119 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5PU. Written and last reviewed by Dr Shehzad Iqbal, MBBS · MRCS · MRCGP · Postgraduate Certificate in Healthcare Law and Ethics, University of Dundee. Last reviewed .
See it before you decide anything
Half an hour by video link. We walk through two courses in full, show the account an administrator would use, and answer whatever your governance people need answered.