Professionalism for Healthcare Professionals

This professionalism course for healthcare professionals helps you take an honest look at your own conduct. It is useful for anyone on a UK register and especially for those responding to an inquiry or investigation. The emphasis is on behaviour in real workplaces: how you treat colleagues as well as patients, how you cope with fatigue and moral distress, how you behave online, and how you speak up.

The course, Professionalism for Healthcare Professionals, is self-paced and takes about 2 hours including reflection and the assessment. It starts from a simple definition: professionalism is doing the right thing consistently, including when nobody would know. One early case follows a nurse at the end of a twelve-hour shift who stays five minutes to look at a patient whose breathing has changed, spots early deterioration and escalates it. Nobody would have known if she had gone home.

Who it is for

• Doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists, pharmacists, allied health professionals, optometrists, osteopaths, chiropractors and other UK registrants.
• Registrants facing a concern about conduct, behaviour towards colleagues, online posts or boundaries.
• Professionals who want CPD that goes beyond clinical skill to the way they work with others.

1. Foundations of professionalism. What professionalism means in practice, why it matters to patients, the public and professionals, and what each UK regulator's standards document expects.
2. Nine attributes of professional practice. Person-centred care, integrity and honesty (including CVs, timesheets and portfolios), accountability and delegation, confidentiality, communication and structured handover, respect and dignity under the Equality Act 2010, teamwork, professional boundaries, and reflective practice.
3. Pressures that test professionalism. Fatigue, burnout and moral distress; low-level incivility and its effect on safety; social media and work messaging groups; and raising concerns through local routes, Freedom to Speak Up guardians or the regulator, with the protection of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998.
4. Breaches, consequences and remediation. Clinical, behavioural, and ethical or legal breaches; conduct outside work and the duty to declare matters such as cautions; and remediation built on four blocks: insight, reflection, learning and change.
5. Conclusion, quick-reference guide and reflective account.

The section on respect covers sexual safety at work. It explains that since October 2024 employers have had a legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers, and that Good medical practice 2024 says explicitly that doctors must not sexually harass anyone. The digital section uses a case of a midwife whose anonymous post about a difficult night was still traced to a family through place, timing and detail.

Each regulator words its standards differently, but the core is shared: put patients first, work within competence, communicate well, protect confidentiality, keep boundaries, be honest, raise concerns and treat colleagues with respect. The course names each regulator's standards document and the table shows where the content fits.

Read the current version of your own regulator's standards alongside the course. Our GMC and NMC guides summarise what those regulators expect for CPD and revalidation.

Regulators judge remediation by its sincerity, its depth and the evidence of lasting change, not by the number of courses completed. The course is clear about this. Its final module sets out four building blocks and the evidence each one usually needs:

This course supplies the learning block and a structured start on reflection. The other blocks come from you and the people around you. One case in the course follows an emergency department doctor investigated after angry outbursts. He accepts that the pressures were real but his behaviour was his responsibility, starts coaching, and gathers multi-source feedback at the start and again nine months later. The improved feedback and his honest account carry weight; the course certificate alone would not have.

After you finish, write the reflective account in your own words; the reflective statement builder gives you a structure. If the concern involves boundaries, see the professional boundaries page, which explains the Boundaries Pack this course also belongs to. Get advice from your defence organisation, union or representative before you submit anything.

• Learning time: about 2 hours, including reading, reflection points, the reflective account and the assessment.
• Format: self-paced reading with workplace cases from many professions, worked examples and a reflection point in every section.
• Assessment: 15 scenario-based multiple-choice questions, pass mark 12 out of 15 (80%).
• Certificate: a certificate of completion from Healthcare Practise UK and a reflection suitable for your CPD record.

For CPD, record the time you actually spend. Most regulators would treat a course done alone as self-directed learning; the NMC, for instance, would usually count it as individual rather than participatory CPD.

Healthcare Practise UK is an independent provider. This course is not approved or endorsed by any UK regulator, and it does not replace your regulator's standards, legal advice or advice from your defence organisation, union or indemnity provider.

Professionalism is the hub of the conduct and trust pack. If a concern has already been raised, the rebuilding trust course covers restoring confidence with patients, colleagues and your regulator; the fitness to practise course explains the impairment test and what decision makers weigh; and How to Deal with a Complaint or Investigation covers the practical response. You can browse every title in the course catalogue, or use Which course do I need? to narrow it down.