A GMC complaint has been made

By a patient, an employer or a colleague, and you need something behind your response. Speak to your defence organisation first, and start building evidence now.

An investigation is open

Section 7 covers the actions the GMC can take and the remediation steps that answer a concern before it escalates.

A hearing is listed

What you can show is what you built in the months before it. Evidence assembled the week before reads as compliance rather than change.

The concern is a judgement call

A consent discussion, a disclosure, a refusal, or a conflict between duties — where the question is how you reasoned rather than how you behaved.

You are applying for restoration

You are erased or off the register and working towards returning. What you did in the meantime is the heart of the application, and you do not need to be registered to take this.

Appraisal, revalidation or a senior student

Two verifiable CPD hours for your appraisal folder — and senior students on clinical placement are welcome, since it is more useful before you need it.

Consent

What was explained, what alternatives were offered, and whether the patient could have declined. Very often a records question as much as a communication one.

Confidentiality and disclosure

Information shared without a basis, or withheld where a duty to disclose existed — both directions generate concerns.

Honesty and probity

Declarations, references, timesheets, research, and what was said afterwards. The category where trust in the profession weighs most heavily.

Candour after something went wrong

Whether the patient was told promptly and openly, and whether an apology was given. Often more decisive than the original error.

Boundaries and digital conduct

Relationships that drifted, contact through personal accounts, and what is visible about you online — now addressed within the main guidance rather than separately.

Competing duties

Where obligations to a patient, an employer, a colleague and the public pulled in different directions and a decision had to be made anyway.

Overview of medical ethics

Three lessons: what medical ethics is, why it matters in day-to-day practice, and the GMC’s role in setting and enforcing standards.

The core ethical principles

Four lessons: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice — and how each shows up in a real decision rather than a textbook one.

GMC ethical guidelines and standards

Good medical practice, the central GMC document, and what it requires of you across its four domains.

Consent, confidentiality and disclosure

Three lessons: informed consent in practice, the limits of confidentiality, and where a duty to disclose overrides it.

Honesty, integrity and candour

Three lessons: probity in declarations and communication, the duty of candour when something goes wrong, and documentation.

Professional boundaries and conduct

Three lessons: maintaining boundaries with patients and colleagues, GMC guidance on boundaries, and conduct online.

Breaches of ethical standards

Four lessons and the part that answers a live concern: the common breaches, their consequences, the actions the GMC can take, and the steps to take to remediate.

Conclusion and assessment

Conclusion and takeaways, followed by a post-course assessment. Your certificate is issued on completion.

The GMC and the MPTS

The GMC investigates concerns and presents cases. The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service runs hearings and decides them. The MPTS sits within the GMC in statute but is operationally separate from the investigation, with its own chair accountable to Parliament.

Good medical practice

The central GMC document, rewritten and in force from 30 January 2024. It sets out what is expected across four domains, and five long-standing standalone documents were withdrawn into it on the same day.

Probity

Honesty and integrity, in and outside clinical work: declarations, references, timesheets, research and what was said afterwards. Our Probity for Healthcare Professionals course covers it in depth. Good medical practice asks that your conduct justifies both your patients’ trust in you and the public’s trust in the profession, and probity concerns engage the second directly.

Duty of candour

Telling a patient promptly when something has gone wrong, apologising, and explaining what happened and what will be done about it. Whether it was done, and how quickly, is often more decisive than the original error.

Remediation

The concrete steps taken to address what went wrong and the evidence that they happened — training, supervision, audit, changed practice. Built over months it evidences change; assembled in a week it evidences compliance. Our Module on Remediation covers what counts and how to evidence it.

Insight

Understanding what went wrong, why, and the effect it had on the patient and on confidence in the profession — together with what has changed as a result. It is what a response is read for, and it is shown rather than claimed.

What actually happened, separately

An account of the events, set out plainly and kept apart from your reflection on them. Where the two are mixed, the account reads as argument and the reflection reads as defence — and neither does its job.

What you understand about it now

Why it happened, and what you did not see at the time. This is where insight belongs, and it belongs after the account rather than woven through it.

What has changed since, and what shows it

Training completed, supervision arranged, practice altered and sustained — with somebody else able to confirm it. Evidence built early does this work; evidence assembled the week before reads as compliance.

The effect on trust, not only on safety

How the conduct looks to someone outside medicine, and why it might reasonably shake their confidence in doctors generally. Good medical practice names both duties; a response that addresses only patient safety has answered one of them.

Foundation doctors

Often the first time anyone has questioned your judgement formally, and usually in a system where you had least control over the conditions. Supervision, escalation and whether you were able to ask for help are central — and saying you were out of your depth is a professional strength rather than an admission.

Specialty and core trainees

A concern can run alongside an ARCP and a training programme, and the two processes ask for different things. Evidence built for one is rarely wasted on the other, but they are not the same document and should not be written as though they were.

SAS and locally employed doctors

Frequently working without the scaffolding a training post provides — no programme director, sometimes no formal educational supervisor. Arranging a named supervisor and documenting it is the single most useful step available, and it has to be arranged rather than assumed.

General practitioners

Continuity is the complicating feature: a relationship over years, decisions taken across many short consultations, and records that have to carry the reasoning because nobody else witnessed it. Boundary and consent concerns often turn on accumulation rather than a single event.

Consultants and senior doctors

Seniority cuts both ways. You have more autonomy to point to, and more responsibility for the culture around you — including how colleagues felt able to raise something with you. Concerns at this level more often involve conduct towards colleagues than clinical care.

Locums and doctors between posts

The hardest position for evidencing change, because there is no continuing employer to confirm it. Book supervision or an appraisal deliberately rather than waiting for a post to provide one, and keep your own dated record of what you did.

Doctors erased or off the register

You are not excluded from any of this — you do not need to be registered to take the course, and what you build while off the register is the substance of a restoration application rather than a preliminary to it.

Senior medical students

Welcome, and it is far more useful before you need it. Medical schools apply professionalism expectations that anticipate Good medical practice, and understanding consent, confidentiality and probity now is easier than learning them under scrutiny later.

Maintaining a professional boundary between you and your patient

Absorbed into Good medical practice 2024. If your understanding of boundaries comes from that document, the content largely survives — but the reference does not.

Intimate examinations and chaperones

Also withdrawn and absorbed. The expectations did not relax; they moved.

Doctors’ use of social media

Withdrawn as a standalone document. Digital conduct is now addressed within the main guidance.

Financial and commercial arrangements and conflicts of interest

Withdrawn and absorbed, along with guidance on sexual behaviour and the duty to report colleagues.

Why it matters in a response

If your understanding of any of these comes from the withdrawn documents, the substance largely survives but the citation does not — and quoting a withdrawn document in a response to the GMC is an avoidable own goal. For the four domains of the current guidance in detail, see our Professionalism and Professional Standards for Doctors course.

Before anything else: do not amend the records

Not to clarify, not to complete, not to add the discussion you know took place. Every clinical system logs amendments with a timestamp and a user, and a note added after a concern has been raised turns a clinical question into a probity one — the category that engages trust in the profession. If something genuinely needs adding, take advice and add it openly as a new, dated entry.

Speak to your defence organisation before you write anything

Not after a draft exists. What you concede, how you frame it, and what you should not say at all are case-specific, and this is the one step no course can substitute for.

Check your citations are current

Five documents were withdrawn on 30 January 2024. Quoting one in a response signals that you have not read the guidance you are being measured against, which is an avoidable impression to create.

Start the evidence now, not when a date is set

Training, supervision, audit, a changed routine. Everything you submit carries a date, and a record already running says something different from one that began the week a hearing was listed.

Address the trust question explicitly

Write a paragraph about how the conduct would look to someone outside medicine. Most responses never attempt this, and it is half of what Good medical practice asks of you.

Get somebody else to confirm the change

A supervisor, an appraiser or a senior colleague who has been told what is actually alleged rather than a sanitised version. Your own account of your own improvement is the weakest evidence available, and everybody offers it.

The pair to this course: the four domains of Good medical practice, worked through in detail.

Honesty and integrity in depth — the category that engages trust in the profession most directly.

Consent as a continuous process, and chaperones — now addressed within the main guidance.

Being open when something goes wrong, and apologising properly — often more decisive than the error.

What fitness to practise means, how the process works, and what is assessed at each stage.

The element assessed in almost every case, and the one most often described as lacking.

How to write reflection that reads as understanding rather than regret, in your own words.

Turning insight into concrete, evidenced change somebody else can verify.