Professional Ethics Course
CPD-AccreditedCertified byThe CPD Certification Service, UK
Remediation · All UK healthcare regulators CPD Certified
Professional Ethics Course
Facing a complaint, allegation or investigation about unprofessional conduct — your behaviour, your actions, or a decision you took? Start here. A CPD-certified course for Doctors, Dentists, Nurses, Midwives, Pharmacists and all other Healthcare Professionals responding to a concern raised with the GMC, GDC, NMC, GPhC, HCPC, GOC, GCC, GOsC or Social Work England. Written for allegations about unprofessional behaviour or actions, integrity and honesty, confidentiality, boundaries, competing interests and putting your own interests first.
Who this course is for
Any healthcare professional in the UK whose professional conduct or judgement has been questioned, or who wants a framework before it is.
Your decision is being questioned
Not your conduct but your judgement — what you decided, and whether you were entitled to decide it. This is the course written for that.
You cannot explain why you decided as you did
The decision felt right at the time and you now have to reconstruct the reasoning. This gives you the vocabulary to do that honestly.
The allegation is that you behaved unprofessionally
No dilemma, no competing obligations — a straightforward allegation that what you did was wrong. The course covers this case too, and it needs a different response.
You face dilemmas routinely
Capacity, refusal of treatment, safeguarding, competing interests, resource pressure. You would rather have a framework than improvise each time.
You are under fitness to practise investigation
A case is open with any UK healthcare regulator and you need documented CPD and written reflection to put behind your response.
You are applying for restoration
You are off a register and building the evidence of change that a restoration application turns on. You do not need to be registered to take this.
The concerns this course speaks to
Concerns about professional conduct rarely arrive labelled as ethics, and they come in two kinds: conduct that was plainly wrong, and judgement calls where reasonable people could disagree. These are the shapes both take.
Conduct that was plainly wrong
Dishonesty, taking advantage of a position, exploiting someone's trust, or acting for your own benefit rather than the patient's. No dilemma to weigh here — what is needed is acknowledgement and evidenced change.
Consent and respecting decisions
Proceeding where consent was doubtful, or overriding a decision you thought unwise. The commonest collision of all — and the point where conduct and clinical judgement meet.
Confidentiality decisions
Disclosing without consent, or declining to disclose where someone thinks you should have. Both are defensible; neither is defensible without reasoning.
Boundaries and relationships
Where a professional relationship shaded into something else, and the judgement calls that preceded it.
Competing interests
Where what is best for this patient conflicts with what is best for others, for your employer, or for you. Justice is the principle most often left out.
Resource and priority decisions
Allocating time, access or treatment under pressure, and being asked afterwards to justify the basis.
Speaking up, or not
Raising a concern about a colleague or a system, the reasons people do not, and how that silence is viewed afterwards.
What the course covers
Six sections and 22 lessons, with a post-module assessment at the finish.
What professional ethics means
The meaning and importance of professional ethics in healthcare, and how it differs from following rules.
The four core principles
Beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice - and what happens when they point in different directions.
Integrity and accountability
Honesty, integrity, accountability and professionalism as ethical commitments rather than compliance requirements.
Confidentiality and information-sharing
Privacy and the ethics of sharing information: when it is justified, and how the justification is reasoned.
Compassion and patient-centred care
Compassion, empathy and putting the patient at the centre of decisions rather than at the end of them.
Professional boundaries
Boundaries and ethical relationships with patients, families and colleagues.
How ethical breaches happen
The causes and common shapes of ethical breaches, and their consequences for patients, professionals and organisations.
Decision-making frameworks
Practical frameworks for working through real dilemmas, rather than recognising the principles after the event.
Reflection, remediation and trust
Learning from an ethical concern, evidencing remediation, and rebuilding trust after a breach.
How this helps if a concern has been raised
First work out which kind of case you have
Allegations about professional conduct divide into two, and the response that answers one actively damages the other.
Where the conduct was plainly wrong — dishonesty, exploiting a position, putting your own interests ahead of a patient’s — there is no dilemma to explain, and reaching for ethical theory reads as intellectualising. What is needed is an unqualified acknowledgement, an understanding of the harm, and evidenced change. Explaining the reasoning here makes it worse, because it looks like justification.
Where it was a genuine dilemma, the opposite applies. Regulators very seldom say the decision itself was wrong, because by definition more than one course of action was defensible. What they examine is whether you saw the tension at the time, weighed it, took advice where you should have, and left a record of the reasoning. Which produces an uncomfortable asymmetry: a questionable decision that was properly thought through is easier to defend than a sound decision with nothing behind it.
Most real cases sit somewhere between the two, and getting the proportion right is most of the work. Concede first, reason second — a response that leads with reasoning where acknowledgement was needed is the commonest way an otherwise sincere answer fails.
On completion you receive a certificate recording the course title, the CPD hours and the date — which, with your own written reflection, is suitable for inclusion in a remediation portfolio, an appraisal folder, a revalidation submission or a response to your regulator. For courses written to your own regulator’s standards, see courses by regulator.
Read your regulator’s own standard HCPC: standards of conduct, performance and ethics ↗ Social Work England: professional standards ↗ GPhC: Standards for pharmacy professionals ↗ GMC: Good medical practice ↗ NMC: The Code ↗ GDC: Standards for the Dental Team ↗ GOC: Standards of Practice ↗ GOsC: Osteopathic Practice Standards ↗ GCC: the Code of Professional Practice ↗
Ready to start? Any UK healthcare profession, whether a concern is live or you want a framework before one arises. Instant access, 2.5 CPD hours, certificate on completion.
Buy this course — £99.00Who wrote it
Course facilitator and author, Probity & Ethics
Dr Iqbal has designed and delivered ethics, probity and professionalism training 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.
MBBS · MRCS · MRCGP · Postgraduate Certificate in Healthcare Law and Ethics, University of Dundee
Written and reviewed by Dr Shehzad Iqbal. Last reviewed August 2026.
What counts as unprofessional conduct?
Behaviour falling below what the profession expects of you — and in practice it clusters into a short list: dishonesty, taking advantage of your position, disrespect towards patients or colleagues, breaching confidence, failing to speak up, and putting your own interests ahead of a patient’s. It rarely involves a clinical error, which is why registrants are so often surprised to find it treated as seriously as one.
The important distinction is between conduct that was plainly wrong and a genuine judgement call where legitimate obligations pointed in different directions. They need opposite responses, and getting that the wrong way round is the commonest way an otherwise sincere answer fails. Working out which one you have is the first thing this course asks you to do.
What these words mean
The terms the regulators use about a concern, and what each one means in practice.
Professional ethics
The ethics of how you conduct yourself as a professional — integrity, accountability, confidentiality, boundaries and whose interests you served. It is distinct from medical ethics, which is about clinical decisions and the dilemmas they produce.
Unprofessional conduct
Behaviour falling below what the profession expects: dishonesty, taking advantage of a position, disrespect, breaching confidence, or putting your own interests ahead of a patient's. Every UK regulator can act on it, and it is the commonest shape an ethics allegation takes.
Integrity
Acting consistently with what you say and what the standards require, including when nobody is checking. It is what a regulator is really assessing when it asks whether someone can be trusted to practise unsupervised.
Competing interests
Where what is best for this patient conflicts with what is best for other patients, your employer, or you. Declaring the conflict is usually straightforward; recognising it in time is the harder part.
Ethical dilemma
A situation in which legitimate obligations point in different directions, so that whatever you do sacrifices something. What is examined afterwards is almost never the choice itself but whether you recognised the tension, weighed it, took advice where you should have, and left a record.
Showing your working
The record of the reasoning: what you weighed, what you decided, and why. It is what makes a defensible decision look defensible — and its absence is why a sound decision with nothing behind it can be harder to answer than a questionable one that was properly thought through.
Concede first, reason second
The ordering rule for a written response. Where something was plainly wrong, acknowledgement comes before any explanation; leading with reasoning where acknowledgement was needed is the commonest way an otherwise sincere response fails.
Taking advice
Consulting someone before acting where a decision is difficult — a named colleague, an ethics or safeguarding lead, your professional body or indemnity provider. Almost every case where reasoning is questioned contains a moment where advice could have been sought and was not, and a record of who you asked is evidence nobody can characterise as self-serving.
Insight
Understanding what went wrong, why it happened, and the effect it had on patients, colleagues and public confidence in the profession. The element most often described as lacking.
Where your regulator sets its standard on conduct and ethics
Only two UK healthcare regulators give ethical practice a heading of its own. Everywhere else it is distributed across standards on honesty, judgement and public trust — which is why an allegation of this kind so rarely arrives labelled as ethics.
HCPC — ethics is in the title
The standards of conduct, performance and ethics, revised on 1 September 2024. The HCPC is the only UK healthcare regulator to name ethics in the title of its core standards, and equality, diversity and inclusion was among the five themes that drove the 2024 revision.
Social Work England — standard 6
Promote ethical practice and report concerns. The clearest standalone ethical-practice standard in this set, and it pairs the obligation to practise ethically with the obligation to speak up when someone else does not.
GPhC — standard 5
Use professional judgement. The standard that asks what you weighed and what you decided — which is exactly what an ethics case turns on. Standard 6, behave in a professional manner, sits alongside it.
GMC — across the domains
Good medical practice, revised 30 January 2024, does not isolate ethics into a domain. Decision-making and consent sit in domain 2, Patients, partnership and communication (paragraphs 16 to 47), and honesty and integrity in domain 4, Trust and professionalism (81 to 101).
NMC — theme 1, and standard 4
The Code opens with prioritise people, and standard 4 requires you to act in the best interests of people at all times, balancing the need to act in someone's best interests against their right to make their own decisions. Two legitimate obligations, in tension, written as a single standard.
GDC — principle 1
Put patients' interests first — including being honest and acting with integrity. Principle 3, obtain valid consent, carries the autonomy side.
GOsC — Themes A and D
Theme A is Communication and patient partnership, which is where consent and shared decisions sit; Theme D is professionalism, including honesty, integrity and public trust.
GOC and GCC
The GOC's nineteen Standards of Practice cover consent, honesty and the reputation of the profession individually rather than under an ethics heading. The GCC's Code of Professional Practice, in force from 1 January 2026, does the same across its Principles — check the current Code, because the principles were renumbered when it replaced the 2016 version.
What this tells you
Only two regulators give ethical practice a heading of its own. Everywhere else it is distributed across standards on consent, honesty, judgement and public trust — which is precisely why an ethics allegation so rarely arrives labelled as one, and why naming the standard your concern engages matters more here than anywhere.
Two kinds of case, two different responses
Getting this wrong is the commonest way a sincere response fails, because the answer that works for one actively damages the other.
Conduct that was plainly wrong
Dishonesty, exploiting a position, putting your own interests ahead of a patient's. There is no dilemma to explain, and reaching for ethical theory reads as intellectualising. What is needed is unqualified acknowledgement, an understanding of the harm, and evidenced change.
A genuine judgement call
Legitimate obligations pointed in different directions and more than one course was defensible. Here the reasoning is the answer: what you saw, what you weighed, whose advice you sought, and what you recorded. A questionable decision properly thought through is easier to defend than a sound decision with nothing behind it.
Concede first, reason second
Most real cases sit between the two, and the proportion is most of the work. Where something was plainly wrong, acknowledgement comes first and any explanation second — a response that leads with reasoning where acknowledgement was needed is the commonest failure of all.
Never reconstruct and present it as contemporaneous
If you did not record the reasoning at the time, say so. Writing it up afterwards and presenting it as though it were written then is a probity problem, not a solution — and the fix is a habit of noting the reasoning behind non-routine decisions from now on.
How to evidence change after a conduct concern
The hardest kind of change to prove, because judgement is invisible. What works is making it visible — and getting someone else to say so.
Start with the acknowledgement, in writing
Where something was plainly wrong, the first document is not a certificate. It is a plain statement of what you did, without the context attached to it, and an account of the harm as the other person would describe it. Everything else reads differently once that is on the page.
Build the habit of recording reasoning
The specific, checkable change for a judgement case: a short note of what you weighed whenever a decision is non-routine or you are uneasy about it. Start it now, date it, and you will have months of it by the time anyone asks — which is the whole point.
Take advice earlier, and show that you did
Almost every case where reasoning was questioned includes a moment where someone could have been consulted and was not. A named colleague, an ethics or safeguarding lead, your indemnity provider, your professional body. Recording who you asked and what they said is evidence nobody can characterise as self-serving.
Get supervision, and let it be about judgement
Not a tick-box arrangement. Someone senior who discusses live decisions with you and will write, in their own words, how you handle them. Third-party observation is the strongest evidence available for anything invisible.
Deal with the thing that produced it
Workload, a commercial pressure, a habit that had gone unchallenged, a relationship you should have declared. Insight means naming the mechanism, and remediation means changing it — because a mechanism left in place will produce the same decision again.
Do it again a few months later
A second conversation with your supervisor, a second round of feedback, a review of the reasoning notes you have accumulated. This is what turns a change into a sustained one, and it is the part most people leave out.
Then write the reflection
What you did, what you now understand about why, whose interests you were actually serving, what you changed, what someone else has said about the difference, and what you are still working on. Attach it to your certificate for this course.
Which of the three do you actually need?
Professionalism, professional ethics and medical ethics answer different questions, and a response usually needs one of them more than the others.
Professionalism asks how you behaved
Boundaries, records, communication, honesty, conduct. If the allegation is that you did something you should not have, that is the starting point.
Professional ethics asks how you decided — this course
The reasoning behind your conduct: whose interests you served, what you weighed, and whether you can show your working. If the allegation is about judgement, integrity or competing interests, start here.
Medical ethics asks how you decided clinically
Treatment decisions and the dilemmas they produce — autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice, and what happens when they collide. If your concern is about a clinical decision, our Medical Ethics Course is the closer fit.
Most real cases need more than one
A decision reached poorly usually shows up as conduct, and conduct concerns usually rest on a judgement made somewhere earlier. The Bulk Buy offer covers any ten courses.
The three things a regulator looks for
Named in almost every decision, in this order. A response that supplies only the first is incomplete.
Insight
Understanding what went wrong, why it happened, and the effect it had on patients, colleagues and public confidence in the profession. It is the element most often described as lacking.
Reflection
Setting that understanding down honestly and in your own words, including what you would do differently and what you have already changed. Reflection is the written record of insight.
Remediation
The concrete steps taken so the same thing does not happen again — training, supervision, changes to how you work — together with evidence that they happened.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as unprofessional conduct?
Behaviour falling below what the profession expects of you, and in practice it clusters into a short list: dishonesty, taking advantage of your position, disrespect towards patients or colleagues, breaching confidence, failing to speak up, and putting your own interests ahead of a patient's. It rarely involves a clinical error, which is why registrants are so often surprised to find it treated as seriously as one — and in many cases more seriously, because what it damages is trust rather than a skill.
The allegation is that I behaved unprofessionally. Is this course right if there was no dilemma?
Yes, and this is the more common situation. Allegations of this kind divide into two, and the response that answers one actively damages the other. Where the conduct was plainly wrong — dishonesty, exploiting a position, putting your own interests ahead of a patient's — there is no dilemma to explain, and reaching for ethical theory reads as intellectualising. What is needed is unqualified acknowledgement, an understanding of the harm, and evidenced change. The course covers both kinds, and working out which one you have is the first thing it asks you to do.
There was no right answer in my situation. Why am I being criticised?
If it was a genuine judgement call, you probably are not being criticised for the outcome. Regulators rarely say the decision itself was wrong, because by definition more than one course of action was defensible. What is examined is whether you saw the tension at the time, weighed it, took advice where you should have, and left a record of the reasoning. Which produces an uncomfortable asymmetry: a questionable decision that was properly thought through is easier to defend than a sound decision with nothing behind it.
Where does my regulator set its standard on conduct and ethics?
Only two give it a heading of its own. The HCPC names ethics in the title of its core document — the standards of conduct, performance and ethics. Social Work England has standard 6, promote ethical practice and report concerns. Everywhere else it is distributed: the GPhC's standard 5, use professional judgement; the NMC's standard 4, acting in someone's best interests balanced against their right to decide; the GDC's principles 1 and 3; the GMC across domains 2 and 4; the GOsC across Themes A and D. That distribution is why an ethics allegation so rarely arrives labelled as one.
Should I take Professional Ethics, a professionalism course, or Medical Ethics?
They answer three different questions. A professionalism course is about how you conducted yourself — boundaries, records, communication, honesty. This course is about the reasoning behind your conduct: whose interests you served, what you weighed, and whether you can show your working. Medical Ethics is about clinical decisions and the dilemmas they produce — autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. If the allegation is that you did something you should not have, start with professionalism; if it is about judgement, integrity or competing interests, start here; if it is about a treatment decision, take Medical Ethics.
How is this different from Medical Ethics?
Medical Ethics is written around clinical decision-making and its dilemmas, and it is where the four principles of healthcare ethics — autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice — are worked through in detail. Professional Ethics is broader and applies across every UK healthcare profession, including those whose work is not primarily clinical: it is about conduct, integrity and whose interests you served. Both carry 2.5 CPD hours and they are the two longest courses in our range.
How do I show ethical reasoning I did not write down at the time?
Honestly, and without pretending otherwise. Reconstructing reasoning after the event and presenting it as though it were contemporaneous is a probity problem, not a solution. What works is setting out what you now recognise you were weighing, saying plainly that you did not record it, and then changing the thing that produced the gap — a habit of noting the reasoning behind non-routine decisions, and taking advice earlier. That is a specific, checkable change, and it is far more persuasive than a tidy account nobody can verify.
How do I evidence a change in judgement, when judgement is invisible?
By making it visible and getting someone else to speak to it. Four things carry weight: a written acknowledgement where something was plainly wrong, produced before any certificate; a habit of recording your reasoning whenever a decision is non-routine, started now and dated so it accumulates; evidence that you took advice, with a note of who you asked and what they said; and supervision that is actually about judgement, from someone senior who will write in their own words how you handle live decisions. Then a second round a few months later showing the difference. Third-party observation is the strongest evidence available for anything that cannot be audited directly.
Nothing I did was against a rule. Can I still be criticised?
Yes, and this is where professional ethics differs from a rulebook. Regulators assess conduct against standards written in general terms — act with integrity, put patients' interests first, maintain public confidence — precisely because no rulebook anticipates every situation. What is examined is whether a reasonable professional would recognise what you did as acceptable, and whose interests it actually served. “There was no rule against it” is a weak answer for the same reason “but I did explain it” is: it addresses compliance where the question was judgement.
Which professions is this course for?
All UK healthcare professionals: doctors, dentists and the dental team, nurses, midwives and nursing associates, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, HCPC-registered professionals, optometrists and dispensing opticians, chiropractors, osteopaths and social workers. Ethical reasoning is the part of practice least dependent on which register you are on.
I am not currently registered — can I still do the course?
Yes. There is no registration check and no requirement to be on any register. The course is taken as often by people who are suspended, who have come off a register, or who are working towards restoration as it is by registrants with a live concern.
Is this course approved or endorsed by a regulator?
No. No UK healthcare regulator approves, accredits or endorses courses from any provider, including us, and none of them keeps an approved list. The course is certified by The CPD Certification Service, an independent accreditation body, under Provider No. 13197.
Will completing this course resolve my case?
No. No course, from us or from anyone else, determines the outcome of a fitness to practise matter. What a course can do is help you build the insight and reflection your response needs, and give you a verifiable certificate to evidence it. Your professional body, union, indemnity provider or a specialist regulatory adviser should advise on your own case.
Can I use it for appraisal, revalidation or my CPD return?
Yes. At 2.5 CPD hours this is one of the two longest courses in our range, and the certificate with your written reflection is structured CPD evidence — suitable for appraisal, revalidation or renewal, employer review, a remediation portfolio or a submission to your regulator.
Why is this course £99 rather than £79?
Because it is longer. It carries 2.5 CPD hours rather than the 2 that most of our courses carry, and only Professional Ethics and Medical Ethics run to that length.
Is it “fitness to practise” or “fitness to practice”?
Both are in use. In British English practise is the verb and practice is the noun, so the regulators write fitness to practise, and this page follows them. Most people searching for help type fitness to practice, and plenty of professional bodies use that spelling too. They mean the same thing, and nothing turns on which you use in your own response.
Can I buy more than one course?
Yes. Our Bulk Buy offer covers any 10 courses and works out considerably cheaper per course. Professional ethics and professionalism are the pair most often bought together, because most real cases involve both a judgement and the conduct that followed from it.
Courses that work alongside this one
The clinical counterpart: written around treatment decisions and the dilemmas they produce.
How you conducted yourself, where this one covers how you decided. The pair most often bought together.
Honesty and integrity more widely — the category that applies where there was no dilemma to weigh.
Where a professional relationship shaded into something else, and the judgement calls that preceded it.
Consent and capacity in practice — where a person's right to decide and your duty to act in their interests collide most often.
The element assessed in almost every case, whatever the allegation, and the one most often described as lacking.
How to write reflection that reads as understanding rather than regret, in your own words.
Rebuilding trust with patients, colleagues, the public and your regulator while you remediate.
This course. Clinical notes, forms and reports — what makes a record defensible, how to correct an error properly, and the evidenced change that answers a documentation concern.
Find courses written to your own regulator’s standards →
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Instant access on purchase. Certificate on completion, CPD certified by The CPD Certification Service.
Buy this course — £99.00 Bulk buy — any 10 courses