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Good medical practice: “Good medical practice sets out the principles of good practice which all doctors must be familiar with. It is the foundation on which the rest of our guidance is built.”
Confidentiality: good practice in handling patient information
Know when you can make disclosures and when to respect confidentiality. This guidance will help you manage and protect patient information in practice.
Confidentiality: disclosing information for education and training purposes
What to share with medical students, doctors in training and others. This also covers writing case studies and training records.
Confidentiality: disclosing information for employment, insurance and similar purposes
Understand what to include in a report and know what you can and can’t leave out. This also covers the principle of ‘no surprises’ for patients.
Confidentiality: disclosing information about serious communicable diseases
How to balance privacy with keeping others safe. This guidance covers yours, and your colleagues’ health, as well as your patients’.
Confidentiality: patients’ fitness to drive and reporting concerns to the DVLA or DVA
Know what to discuss with patients whose health makes them unfit to drive. Understand when it is their responsibility to report this and when it is yours.
Confidentiality: reporting gunshot and knife wounds
What to tell the police and when to share information without your patient’s consent.
Confidentiality: responding to criticism in the media
Understand what you can and can’t say in response to others’ comments. This covers criticism of you personally and your practice or the health service.
Maintaining personal and professional boundaries: Understand how to keep a suitable doctor patient relationship.
Using social media as a medical professional: Our guidance on social media, apps and other online tools. This covers professional boundaries, confidentiality and respect for colleagues.
Intimate examinations and chaperones: Examinations can be embarrassing or distressing for patients. This guidance covers examinations of a patient’s intimate areas. It can also apply to any examination where it is necessary to touch or be close to the patient.
Ending your professional relationship with a patient: In rare circumstances the trust between you and a patient may break down. This guidance covers when you should and shouldn’t end the relationship and what to do. This includes closing or relocating your practice.
Children and young people: Protecting children and young people: the responsibilities of all doctors
How to identify and protect children and young people who are at risk. This includes if they are living with their families or living away from home.
0–18 years: Understand how to provide care to young patients. Including young people who have the capacity to consent. This also covers assessing best interests and discussing sexual activity.
Decision making and consent: Shared decision making and consent are fundamental to good medical practice. This guidance explains that the exchange of information between doctor and patient is essential to good decision making.
Making and using visual and audio recordings of patients: Know what you can record and when consent is needed. This covers making covert recordings and recording telephone calls. Understand how to store and delete recordings.
Consent to research: Understand how the principles of decision m: aking and seeking consent apply to research.
Good practice in research: Research involving people can be key in improving the care and health of the population as a whole. This guidance will help you to protect patients and maintain public confidence.
Good practice in prescribing and managing medicines and devices: This guidance gives best practice about prescribing to patients. It includes remote prescribing, unlicensed medicines and shared care.
Guidance for doctors who offer cosmetic interventions: This covers any procedure or treatment aiming to change the way someone looks. Including surgical and non-surgical procedures. These may be invasive or non-invasive.
Treatment and care towards the end of life: good practice in decision making: Understand decision-making for patients of all ages at the end of their lives. The guidance also covers clinically assisted hydration and nutrition and CPR.
When a patient seeks advice or information about assistance to die: Responding to patients’ who want advice about assisted dying can be difficult. Recognise how you can respect and listen to patients without conflict with the law.
Leadership and management for all doctors: Some doctors are formal leaders, accountable for the performance of a team or teams. But all doctors are responsible for identifying problems and solving them. This guidance covers what we mean by shared leadership.
Raising and acting on concerns about patient safety: If you believe patient care and/or safety is at risk, it is important you know how to take the appropriate action.
Delegation and referral: You will often work with colleagues to provide care for your patients. Know where your responsibility stops and where it continues.
Identifying and managing conflicts of interest: Understand how to manage potential conflicts of interest and mitigating the impact of them when you can’t avoid them.
Personal beliefs and medical practice: Peoples’ beliefs and cultural practices can be different from each other’s. Know how to treat all patients with respect, whatever their choices or beliefs.
Providing witness statements or expert evidence as part of legal proceedings: You may be asked to give evidence to courts and tribunals. Our guidance applies when you appear in a professional or non-professional capacity.
Reporting criminal and regulatory proceedings: What you do and don’t need to tell us when you’re subject to criminal or civil proceedings anywhere in the world.
Duty of candour: Understand your duty to be open and honest with patients, or those close to them, if something goes wrong. This covers when to apologise to patients and sharing mistakes with colleagues.
Raising and acting on concerns about patient safety: If you believe patient care and/or safety is at risk, it is important you know how to take the appropriate action.
