GOsC Ethics Course for Osteopaths

A complaint has been made

By a patient, directly or to the GOsC, and you need something behind your response. Evidence built early always reads better than evidence assembled before a deadline.

A GOsC fitness to practice investigation is open

Section 7 covers the investigation process, consequences, and the remediation that answers a concern.

Consent or boundaries are in question

The two areas most often engaged in osteopathic concerns, and the two this course spends the most time on.

You're applying for restoration

You're off the register and working towards going back on it. What you did in the meantime is the heart of the application, and you don't need to be registered to take this.

You're building your CPD

Two verifiable hours you can complete and record the same day, with a certificate showing the title, hours and date.

Nothing has been raised

You practise single-handed or in a small clinic, and would rather your consent and record-keeping stood up to scrutiny before anyone examines them.

Consent across a course of treatment

Consent taken once at assessment and never revisited, techniques not explained, or a patient who says they didn't know what was going to happen.

Professional Boundaries

Boundary concerns in hands-on practice, dual relationships in small communities, and the absolute prohibition on sexual relationships with patients.

Advertising and Claims

What treatment is said to achieve, in the clinic and online — claims made directly to the person paying attract particular scrutiny.

Record-Keeping

Notes too thin to show what was discussed, agreed or examined — and the near-impossibility of defending a consent complaint without them.

Confidentiality and Data

Patient information in a small practice: who can see it, how it's stored, and what may be shared with family, insurers or other practitioners.

Candour After Something Goes Wrong

An adverse reaction, an unexpected outcome, or a mistake — and whether the patient was told promptly, openly and with an apology.

Ethics in osteopathic practice

This section establishes the ethical foundations of osteopathic practice and explains how the GOsC uses its regulatory powers to uphold those standards across the profession.

The core ethical principles

We examine each of the five pillars of medical ethics in the context of osteopathic practice, exploring how they shape clinical decision-making and your obligations to every patient you treat.

GOsC standards and guidance

This section takes you through the GOsC's key regulatory documents in full, including what the Osteopathic Practice Standards require of registrants and how the GOsC's CPD scheme and complaints process operate in practice.

Integrity and duty of candour

We cover your professional duty to be open and honest with patients, colleagues, and regulators, including the specific obligations around duty of candour, ethical marketing of your practice, and maintaining accurate clinical records.

Patient-centred care and shared decisions

This section examines how to obtain and maintain valid informed consent throughout a course of treatment, and addresses your safeguarding responsibilities to vulnerable patients in the osteopathic setting.

Professional boundaries

We address the boundaries that govern the therapeutic relationship, how to identify and manage conflicts of interest, and the GOsC's expectations around social media and digital communication with patients.

Breaches of ethical standards

This section identifies the most frequently encountered ethical breaches in osteopathic practice, explains how the GOsC investigates concerns, and sets out what effective remediation looks like from a regulator's perspective.

Conclusion and assessment

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

Continuing consent

Consent understood as a process running through a course of treatment rather than a permission granted once. A plan agreed at assessment sets a direction; it does not authorise each session that follows.

Osteopathic Practice Standards

The standards of conduct, ethics and competence required of osteopaths, arranged under four themes; see “The Four Themes of the Osteopathic Practice Standards” below.

Contemporaneous note

An entry made at the time or as soon as possible afterwards — usually the only trace of a spoken consent discussion, which is why a brief note written then outweighs a detailed account written after a complaint arrives.

Duty of candour

The professional obligation to tell a patient promptly when something has gone wrong, apologise, and explain what happened and what you'll do about it.

Professional boundary

The limit that keeps a clinical relationship therapeutic rather than personal, held in place by the osteopath rather than the patient.

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 plan is not the consent

A treatment plan agreed at assessment sets a direction. It does not authorise each subsequent session.

New technique, new region, new conversation

Where you propose something you haven't done before with this patient, that's a fresh consent conversation.

It has to appear in the notes

A discussion nobody recorded is a discussion you cannot evidence.

It can be withdrawn at any point

During a session as much as between them. The patient should know that before treatment starts.

Communication and Patient Partnership

Communication, building an effective partnership with the patient, and consent. Most osteopathic concerns engage this theme before any other.

Knowledge, Skills and Performance

Osteopaths must have the knowledge and skills to practise as primary healthcare professionals, and must maintain and develop them throughout their careers.

Safety and Quality in Practice

The standards governing the delivery of care itself — high-quality and safe healthcare, and everything that supports it.

Professionalism

Acting with honesty and integrity, and upholding high standards of professional and personal conduct.

Before anything else: do not amend the records

Not to clarify, not to complete, not to add the consent discussion you know took place. Altering notes after a concern has been raised turns a records problem into a probity one.

Revisit consent at the start of each session

A sentence is enough: what you propose today, why, and a check that the patient is still content.

Write down what was discussed, not only what was done

The technique proposed, the region, anything the patient asked, and that they were told they could stop.

Say that treatment can stop at any point

Before you begin, not as an afterthought.

Get somebody outside the practice to look

A peer or a former tutor who will read a sample of your notes and tell you whether the consent discussion is visible in them.

Review it again a few months on

Sustained change that somebody else has confirmed is the strongest evidence you can put in front of the GOsC.

The professionalism pair to this course: how you conducted yourself, where this one covers how decisions were reached.

Consent as a continuous process and the privacy around it — directly relevant to hands-on practice.

Boundaries in hands-on practice, chaperones, drift and conduct towards colleagues, in depth.