CPD-AccreditedCertified byThe CPD Certification Service, UK
GOC Ethics Course for Optometrists and Opticians
CPD course for Optometrists and Dispensing Opticians facing a GOC fitness to practise investigation, complaint or hearing — and for your CPD
In short: Ethics and Ethical Standards for Optometrists and Opticians is an online ethics course for optometrists and dispensing opticians facing an allegation or GOC investigation, a complaint or a fitness to practise concern, and for CPD. It is self-paced, 2 CPD hours, £79 (£50 with Bulk Buy 10), CPD certified by The CPD Certification Service (provider no. 13197), with a certificate on completion. It is written to the GOC Standards for Optometrists and Dispensing Opticians and covers the ethical decisions a GOC case is measured against.
Which of these is your situation?
- Ethics and ethical standards — an allegation or GOC investigation about your conduct as an optometrist or dispensing optician?
- Facing an allegation of unethical behaviour from a patient, an employer or the GOC?
- Under a GOC fitness to practise investigation and asked to show insight and remediation?
- A complaint about pressure to buy, or an upgrade presented as necessary?
- A conflict of interest — targets, commission or a preferred supplier not declared?
- A finding not explained, or a referral not made?
- A concern about record keeping or an advertising claim?
- A boundary crossed with a patient or a colleague, in person or online?
- Preparing for a Fitness to Practise Committee hearing, applying for restoration, or building your CPD?
- Looking for a CPD accredited ethics course for optometrists that a panel will recognise as remediation?
This course is written for every one of these — and for your CPD.
Help with a GOC complaint, investigation or hearing starts here. An ethics course for Optometrists and Dispensing Opticians, written to the GOC Standards of Practice and covering allegations about consent and explanation, commercial pressure and conflicts of interest, professional boundaries, record keeping, advertising claims, confidentiality, patients in vulnerable circumstances and the duty of candour. This course helps you address the concern — and demonstrate the remediation, with a dated certificate for your written response, your CPD record or a hearing.
Dr Shehzad IqbalFounder, course author and facilitatorMBBS, MRCS, MRCGP
Ludmila UpenieceBusiness development and supportPsychology, UEL London
Who This Course is For
A patient has complained to you or to the GOC
By a patient, directly or to the GOC, and you need something behind your response. Evidence built early always reads better than evidence assembled before a deadline.
A GOC fitness to practice investigation is open
Section 7 covers the investigation process, the professional, legal and reputational consequences, and the remediation that answers a concern.
Accused of commercial pressure or a conflict of interest
Selling, targets, commission or a conflict of interest. The area most specific to your profession, and the one this page leads with.
Owning or directing an optical practice
The GOC registers optical businesses as well as individuals, so the Standards for Optical Businesses apply to you directly.
Applying for restoration to the register
You are off the register and working towards going back on it. What you did in the meantime is the core of the application, and you do not need to be registered to take this.
Building your CPD before a concern arises
Two verifiable hours you can complete and record the same day, with a certificate showing the title, hours and date.
The Concerns This Course Speaks To
Pressure in Dispensing
Real or perceived pressure to buy, upgrades presented as necessary, or a patient who felt the recommendation followed the till rather than the examination.
Conflicts of Interest
Targets, commission, ownership and preferred suppliers. Not wrong in themselves; damaging when undeclared.
Findings not explained
Something seen and not communicated, a referral not made or not explained, or a result the patient only learned about later and from someone else.
Record-Keeping
Notes too thin to show what was found, what was recommended, or what the patient chose to decline — and the near-impossibility of answering a pressure complaint without them.
Boundaries
Close-work examination, the prohibition on conduct of a sexual nature with patients, a boundary crossed with a colleague, digital contact, and managing inappropriate behaviour in either direction.
Advertising and Public Representation
Claims made in the practice, in print and online, about what a product or a test will achieve.
What This Goc Ethics Course For Optometrists And Opticians Covers
Eight sections and 33 lessons — the most lessons of any course in our range — with a reflective quiz closing each of the first seven and a post-course assessment at the finish.
Ethics in optical practice
This section establishes the ethical foundations of optical practice and explains how the GOC uses its regulatory framework to uphold professional standards across optometrists, dispensing opticians, and optical businesses.
The core ethical principles
We examine each of the five pillars of medical ethics in the context of optical practice, exploring how they shape clinical decision-making and your duties to every patient you see.
GOC standards and guidance
This section takes you through the GOC's key regulatory documents in full, examining what each set of standards requires and how the GOC's CPD scheme and fitness to practise process operate in practice.
Integrity and duty of candour
We cover your professional obligation to be open and honest with patients and regulators, including the specific duties around duty of candour, the ethical marketing of optical services, and maintaining accurate clinical records.
Patient-centred care and shared decisions
This section examines how to obtain and maintain valid informed consent, how to involve patients meaningfully in decisions about their care, and your specific responsibilities when working with vulnerable or at-risk individuals.
Professional boundaries
We address the boundaries that govern the therapeutic relationship in optical practice, how to identify and manage conflicts of interest, and the GOC's expectations around digital communication and social media conduct.
Breaches of ethical standards
This section identifies the most frequently encountered ethical breaches in optical practice, explains how the GOC investigates concerns raised about registrants, and sets out what effective remediation looks like from the regulator's perspective.
Conclusion and assessment
The final section consolidates the ethical framework built across all eight modules and prepares you for the post-course assessment, on passing which you will receive a CPD certificate suitable for inclusion in your remediation portfolio.
How this helps if a GOC concern has been raised
That is how optical practice is organised, and it means every recommendation you make can be read twice, once as clinical judgement and once as a sale. When a complaint reaches the GOC, that second reading is the one you have to answer.
Which makes the remediation specific: reaching the clinical decision before the commercial conversation starts, naming which elements are necessary and which are optional, declaring the interest, and writing down what you recommended and what the patient chose. Each moves the defence from your word to your record.
On completion you receive a CPD certificate recording the course title, the CPD hours and the date — with your written reflection, evidence for a GOC fitness to practise response, a remediation portfolio, your CPD record or a restoration application. See all GOC remediation courses.
Read the GOC’s own guidance: GOC: Standards of Practice ↗ GOC guidance: consent ↗ GOC: how we investigate a concern ↗
Guides for a GOC concern
Read these before you respond. Each one covers a stage of the process and names the courses for it.
- GOC fitness to practise: what optical professionals do next
- GOC fitness to practise explained for optometrists and dispensing opticians
- A patient has complained to the GOC: what should you do right now?
- GOC Fitness to Practise Committee hearing: what to expect
- GOC erasure from the optical register: is restoration possible?
Ready to start? Optometrists and dispensing opticians; registration is not required. Instant access, 2 CPD hours, certificate on completion.
Buy this course — £79.00Who wrote it
Dr Iqbal has designed and delivered ethics, probity and professionalism remediation courses for UK healthcare professionals since 2020, working with registrants of all nine UK healthcare regulators, online and face to face. He combines clinical practice with formal postgraduate training in healthcare law and ethics.
How Do You Separate Clinical Advice From a Sale in Optical Practice?
By sequencing it, saying it, and recording it. Reach the clinical judgement about what the patient needs before anything is priced. Tell them plainly which parts are clinically necessary and which are optional — patients rarely distinguish the two unless told.
Declare any interest: targets, commission, ownership, a preferred supplier. A conflict of interest is not misconduct; failing to acknowledge one is what turns it into a concern. Then record what you recommended and why, especially where the patient declined it — because without that entry, a later complaint about pressure, or about under-treatment, is answered only by memory.
What These GOC Terms Mean
The vocabulary a GOC concern is written in. The first two are the ones optical practice turns on.
Conflict of interest
Any interest that could be seen to influence your clinical advice — a sales target, commission, ownership of the practice, a preferred supplier. Having one is not misconduct and is unavoidable in most optical settings. Failing to acknowledge one is what turns it into a concern.
Clinically necessary and optional
The distinction a patient cannot make for themselves and will not make unless you make it for them. Saying which elements of a recommendation are needed and which are preference is the clearest single way to show advice was not driven by the sale.
Standards of Practice
The nineteen standards of behaviour and performance the GOC expects of every registered optometrist and dispensing optician, not listed in order of priority; see “The GOC Standards, and What Changed in 2025” below.
Standards for Optical Businesses
A separate set of GOC standards applying to registered optical businesses, not just individual registrants — see “The GOC Standards, and What Changed in 2025” below.
Patients in vulnerable circumstances
A category the 2025 standards give explicit attention to, with its own GOC guidance. Note the GOC's own framing: adjustments made to meet these patients' needs are not the same thing as the reasonable adjustments required by law.
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. Shown rather than claimed.
The GOC standards, and what changed in 2025
If you last read the standards before 2025, read them again — they were replaced, and the changes are directly relevant to two sections of this course.
Nineteen standards, no order of priority
The Standards of Practice define nineteen standards of behaviour and performance for every registered optometrist and dispensing optician. The first is to listen to patients and ensure they are at the heart of decisions about their care.
New standards from 1 January 2025
New Standards of Practice, Standards for Optical Students and Standards for Optical Businesses all took effect on that date, replacing the previous versions.
Vulnerable patients and sexual boundaries
The revision added requirements on the care of patients in vulnerable circumstances and on maintaining appropriate sexual boundaries, and the GOC published separate guidance on both in December 2025. Two points from that guidance are worth knowing: adjustments for patients in vulnerable circumstances are not the same as the reasonable adjustments required by law, and all sexual misconduct is treated as serious.
Businesses are registered too
A separate set of standards applies to registered optical businesses. A practice owner or director can face regulatory consequences alongside the clinician, which is unusual among the nine UK healthcare regulators.
What to Change, and How to Evidence It
Six things you can start at your next clinic, and one you must not do. Each is aimed at the second reading — the one that treats your recommendation as a sale.
Before anything else: do not amend the records
Not to clarify what you recommended, not to add the discussion you know took place. Altering notes after a concern has been raised turns a records or advice problem into a probity one, and practice management systems log every change with a timestamp and a user.
Reach and state the clinical decision before any price is mentioned
Make it a fixed sequence rather than a judgement call, so it holds on a busy day. Being able to say the order in which the conversation happened is most of the answer to a pressure complaint.
Name what is necessary and what is optional, out loud
In those words. Patients do not separate the two on their own, and the moment you do it for them is the moment the recommendation stops looking like a sale.
Record what was declined, not only what was bought
A patient who turned something down is the one most likely to complain later, in either direction — that they were pressured, or that they were not warned.
Write down how you handle your own conflict
If there are targets or commission, decide what you say to patients about it and apply it consistently. A stated practice you follow is evidence; an assurance that it never affected you is not.
Have somebody else read a sample, then again months later
A colleague from another practice, reading records against the question: can you tell what was recommended, what was optional and what was declined? Repeat it a few months on.
Frequently Asked Questions
The targets are set by my employer. Is that a defence?
Not on its own. A conflict of interest doesn't have to be yours to disclose — where targets or commission structures shape recommendations, the GOC still expects that pressure to be visible to the patient and named, not absorbed silently and passed on.
A patient has behaved inappropriately towards me. Is that covered?
Yes. Boundaries run in both directions — where a patient initiates, the responsibility for holding the boundary still rests with you, and the course covers managing inappropriate patient behaviour directly.
What happens at a GOC fitness to practise hearing?
This course covers the investigation and remediation stage rather than hearing procedure in detail. For a step-by-step walkthrough of what a GOC Fitness to Practise Committee hearing involves, see our guide: What Happens at a GOC Fitness to Practise Committee Hearing. The insight and remediation this course builds are exactly what a hearing panel is looking for.
Will completing this course resolve my case?
No course determines the outcome of a fitness to practise case. What it provides is the evidenced insight and remediation a response is read for — take advice from your indemnity provider, professional body or a specialist regulatory adviser about your own circumstances.
H3: Is it “fitness to practise” or “fitness to practice”?
Yes. There is no registration check and no requirement to be on the register. The course is taken as often by optical professionals who are suspended, who have come off the register, or who are working towards restoration as it is by registrants responding to a live concern. If you are applying for restoration, evidence of what you have done in the meantime is the core of the application.
What are a common ethical concerns in optical practice?
Consent and explanation of what was found, pressure or perceived pressure in dispensing, conflicts of interest around targets and commission, record-keeping too thin to show what was advised, missed or poorly communicated clinical findings, and advertising claims. Section 7 works through the common breaches and their consequences.
Why do we write “fitness to practise” and not “fitness to practice”?
Both spellings are in use for the same process. In British English practise is the verb and practice is the noun, so the UK regulators write fitness to practise, and this page follows them. The spelling with a c is the American one, and it appears in searches and in some professional bodies’ material. They mean the same thing, and nothing turns on which you use in your own response.
Related Courses
Conflicts of interest, targets and commercial pressure in depth — the recurring issue in optical practice, and the most relevant companion course to this one.
Consent as a continuous process, and the privacy around close-work examination.
Boundaries in hands-on practice, drift, digital contact and conduct towards colleagues, in depth.
Being open when something goes wrong — a missed finding, a delayed referral, a dispensing error.
The element a panel assesses in every case, and the one a response is read for.
See all GOC remediation courses →
Start Your GOC Ethics Course Today, Finish at Your Own Pace
Instant access on purchase. Certificate on completion, CPD certified by The CPD Certification Service — written specifically for optometrists and dispensing opticians, including those working towards restoration.
Buy this course — £79.00 Bulk buy — any 3, 5 or 10 courses