Professionalism and Professional Standards for Optometrists and Opticians

This GOC Standards of Practice course treats professionalism as something visible in ordinary actions: how you introduce yourself, how you supervise a pre-registration student, what you delegate to an optical assistant, how you write to a GP about a referral, how you respond to a difficult customer and how you behave online. The General Optical Council's standards for registrants, students and businesses, updated from 1 January 2025, set out those expectations, and the course walks through them with optical workplace cases.

It takes about two hours, ends with a 15-question scenario quiz and a written reflective account, and leads to a certificate of completion from Healthcare Practise UK. You buy and take it on our course portal.

For the regulator's rules in one place (registration, the 36-point CPD cycle and the fitness to practise process), see our GOC regulator page.

• Optometrists and dispensing opticians at any stage, including locums who move between practices and have to adapt quickly
• Contact lens opticians and independent prescribing optometrists taking on enhanced or extended roles
• Supervisors of student optometrists and student dispensing opticians
• Practice owners, directors and managers who are registrants and set policies, targets and staffing
• Student registrants who want to understand what will be expected of them once qualified
• Registrants facing a complaint or GOC concern about conduct, supervision or professional judgement

If your question is about a specific ethical decision, such as consent, a DVLA disclosure or a conflict of interest, start with the ethics course for optometrists instead.

1. Professionalism in optical practice

What professionalism means when you are also selling products, why patients judge it by communication, honesty and the absence of pressure, and the basics of the GOC's role: annual registration renewal, indemnity and CPD, and the legal restrictions on sight testing and certain sales.

2. Core principles

Nine principles applied to optical work: patient-centred care, integrity and honesty, accountability (including supervisors' responsibility for restricted activities), confidentiality, communication with other services, respect and inclusion, teamwork, records and reflective practice.

3. GOC Standards of Practice and Standards for Optical Businesses

Completing training and accreditation before extending your role into urgent eye care or prescribing, knowing the NHS and local pathways where you work, how safety depends on business systems as well as individuals, and using digital tools with professional judgement.

4. Professional boundaries and ethical conduct

Power imbalances with students and junior staff, the 2025 prohibition on sexual conduct with patients and unwanted sexual conduct with colleagues or students, commercial pressures such as bonuses for each myopia management plan, transparency online, and responding calmly to aggression.

5. Breaches, consequences and remediation

The difference between clinical, professional, ethical and regulatory breaches, what case examiners and the Fitness to Practise Committee can do, and remediation through targeted learning and changed routines.

6. Professionalism and fitness to practise

Early warning signs, how insight features in decisions, how to conduct yourself during an investigation (seek advice, respond honestly, start remediating), restoring trust, and resilience as supported practice rather than silent coping.

The course is built on the GOC's Standards of Practice for Optometrists and Dispensing Opticians, the Standards for Optical Students and the Standards for Optical Businesses, all updated with effect from 1 January 2025. The table links the main themes to the modules. Check the current text on the GOC website, which takes precedence over any course.

The CPD element reflects the GOC's 2025 to 2027 cycle: at least 36 points across four domains, starting with a personal development plan and including a peer review event and a reflective exercise.

• About 2 CPD hours of self-directed learning, including the reflection and assessment, as stated in the course.
• Self-paced reading with optical workplace cases such as a locum whose referrals keep coming back, a domiciliary visit, and a supervisor asked to cover two students and her own clinic.
• 15 scenario-based multiple-choice questions, pass mark 12 out of 15 (80%).
• A final reflective account with three prompts: what you learned, which warning signs apply to your practice, and your action plan. Your answers stay on your device.
• A certificate of completion from Healthcare Practise UK.

Module 6 is written for the registrant who has just opened a letter from the GOC. Its advice is practical: get advice promptly from your professional body or indemnity provider, respond honestly, preserve your records and start remediating early rather than waiting for a hearing. What this course cannot do is stand in for remediation. A panel looks for evidence that you understand what went wrong and that the risk of it happening again has fallen. A certificate shows learning; changed practice, audit and feedback show that the learning stuck.

• Use the course reflection as a first draft, then expand it with our reflective statement builder.
• Add the Insight course if you need to show that you understand the impact of what happened, and the Reflective Practice course if writing reflection is new to you.
• For conduct and public-confidence concerns, see the conduct and trust pathway, which pairs this course with trust, professionalism and complaint-handling learning.

We cannot predict how the GOC will decide, and no provider honestly can. Healthcare Practise UK is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the GOC.

Professional standards and ethics overlap but are not the same. This course asks whether your habits and systems keep patients safe across a career. The ethics course for optometrists and opticians asks what is right in a particular decision: consent, a DVLA disclosure, a target-driven sale, a glazing error. Taken together they cover the GOC standards from both directions. If a concern has been raised, the Conduct and Trust Pack adds trust, professionalism, complaint-handling, insight, reflection and remediation learning.

Not sure what you need? Answer a few questions in Which course do I need? or browse the full course catalogue.