Ethics and Ethical Standards for HCPC Regulated Health and Care Professionals

The HCPC regulates fifteen professions, from paramedics working alone at the roadside to biomedical scientists who may never meet a patient. They all work to the same Standards of conduct, performance and ethics. This HCPC ethics course shows how the four ethical principles and those standards apply across that range, using cases from different professions rather than a single generic scenario.

The cases include a paramedic whose patient refuses conveyance because he cares for his wife, a radiographer asked to X-ray a young woman's back with no red flags, an operating department practitioner who stops the team over a missing swab, and a clinical scientist who adds his name to a paper he did not contribute to. Each one shows the reasoning that makes a decision defensible.

The course takes about 2 hours, including the assessment and a reflective account. Healthcare Practise UK is an independent provider. This course is not affiliated with or endorsed by any regulator, and completing it does not change any regulatory decision. Regulators and panels decide cases; your course record is one piece of evidence among many.

The course is written for every HCPC-registered profession and acknowledges where practice differs. Many registrants work autonomously, in people's homes or in private practice, where an ethical decision may rest on one person.

• Paramedics, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and radiographers.
• Speech and language therapists, dietitians, podiatrists, orthoptists, prosthetists and orthotists.
• Practitioner psychologists, arts therapists, biomedical and clinical scientists, operating department practitioners and hearing aid dispensers.
• Registrants preparing a CPD profile, and those responding to a concern about consent, records, honesty, boundaries or scope.

If you want more on registration, CPD audit and the 2023 standards of proficiency, the HCPC professionalism course covers them in depth.

Six teaching modules, a conclusion, references and a final reflective account. The lessons are listed as they appear in the course:

1. An Overview of Healthcare Ethics: What Healthcare Ethics Is; Why Ethics Matters in the Health and Care Professions; The Role of the HCPC; Protected Titles, Registration and Scope of Practice.
2. The Core Ethical Principles in Healthcare Practice: Autonomy; Beneficence and Non-Maleficence; Justice; Confidentiality.
3. Professional Integrity and Honesty: Maintaining Honesty and Integrity; The Duty of Candour; Documentation and Record-Keeping; Conflicts of Interest and Commercial Pressures.
4. Patient-Centred Care and Shared Decision-Making: Informed Consent; Patient Communication; Delegation, Supervision and Learners.
5. Professional Boundaries and Conduct: Maintaining Appropriate Boundaries; HCPC Guidance on Boundaries.
6. Breaches of Expected Ethical Standards: Common Breaches; Consequences of Breaching Ethical Standards; The HCPC's Actions in Response to Breaches; Steps to Remediate a Breach; Health, Character and Declarations.
7. Conclusion and Takeaways.
8. Reflection.

Along the way the course covers the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and unwise decisions, justification of exposures under the Ionising Radiation (Medical Exposure) Regulations 2017, consent after Montgomery, conflicts of interest in private and commercial settings, and your duty to tell the HCPC promptly about cautions, charges, convictions or employer restrictions.

The HCPC's revised Standards of conduct, performance and ethics came into effect on 1 September 2024 and contain ten standards. The course refers to them throughout:

For CPD, the HCPC sets no fixed number of hours. At each two-yearly renewal it audits 2.5% of each profession, and selected registrants submit a CPD profile showing how their learning met the five CPD standards and benefited service users. A completed course with a written reflection on how you applied it is the kind of entry a profile needs. The HCPC regulator page summarises the audit rules.

Module 6 sets out the HCPC process: threshold, investigation, an Investigating Committee panel deciding whether there is a case to answer, then a Conduct and Competence or Health Committee hearing, or consensual disposal. It explains the sanctions a panel can impose, from a caution order to striking off. The HCPTS practice note on impairment explains that panels look at insight and at whether the concern has been remedied and is unlikely to be repeated.

The course's own example shows the pattern that tends to persuade: a prosthetist with a record-keeping concern completed a course, introduced a template, had a colleague audit twenty records each quarter and wrote reflective accounts on what changed. Learning alone would not have been enough. To use this course the same way:

• Complete the module that matches the standard in question.
• Write a reflection that links the concern to what you learned and what you now do differently. The reflective statement builder offers prompts for this.
• Add practice evidence: audits, supervision notes, feedback or revised procedures.
• If you need to show deeper understanding, add the insight course and the reflective practice course.
• Agree what you submit with your union, professional body or legal representative.

Each module ends with key points, a worked example and an "apply it" task. The final assessment has 15 scenario-based multiple-choice questions and the pass mark is 12 out of 15 (80%). If you score lower, the course points you back to the sections behind the questions you missed and you can try again. After you pass, you write a short reflective account against three prompts. The reflection is stored on your own device only and is not sent to us, so keep a copy with your certificate. The certificate of completion is issued in the name Healthcare Practise UK and records the course title and date. The course itself says it plainly: passing supports your learning record; it does not by itself demonstrate insight or remediation.

One of the reflection prompts asks which HCPC standard you find hardest to meet in your own setting and why, which also makes a strong opening for a CPD profile entry.

The natural companion is the HCPC professionalism course, which covers renewal, CPD audit, the 2023 standards of proficiency and online conduct. For a conduct concern, the Conduct and Trust Pack brings together Rebuilding Trust, Professionalism for Healthcare Professionals, Fitness to Practise, How to Deal with a Complaint or Investigation and the insight, reflection and remediation modules. The remediation pathway adds this HCPC ethics course to the pack for HCPC registrants.

Try Which course do I need? for a suggested short list, or browse the course catalogue.