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On 23rd August 2023, the GMC published the updated Good Medical Practice, which sets out the standards of patient care and professional behaviour expected of all doctors registered in the UK - regardless of specialty or career level. This has been the first update for ten years, and doctors will have five months to get to grips with the new standards before they come into implementation on January 30th 2024.
As well as a public consultation last year on a draft updated version, the GMC has carried out extensive research into public enquiries, reports and gathering feedback from thousands of medical professionals, patients and others involved in the UK’s health services. This framework exists to guide doctors when caring for patients and working with colleagues. Rather than being a set of rules, they represent good practice, and doctors should use their judgement to apply them to their day-to-day practice.
Five Key Updates
Many aspects of the new guidance remain consistent with the current version, however, there is a particularly strong focus on values and behaviours that create a more supportive, fair and respectful workplace.
Five key areas have been specifically updated to help doctors to:
Create respectful, fair and compassionate workplaces for colleagues and patients.
Promote patient-centred care.
Tackle discrimination.
Champion fair and inclusive leadership.
Support continuity of care and safe delegation.
The new domain headings
It's been the GMC’s mission to make the new guidance easier for doctors to navigate, consisting of clearly defined sections that provide a framework of professional standards.
The four domains within Good Medical Practice have been restructured as:
Domain 1: Knowledge, skills and development
Domain 2: Patients, partnership and communication
Domain 3: Colleagues, culture and safety
Domain 4: Trust and professionalism
Although the new guidance has been published, we know doctors are currently being appraised based on the 2013 Good Medical Practice. As appraisal portfolio reviews are carried out retrospectively, and cycles usually take place from April to March, the GMC’s aim is for all appraisals to be using the 2024 edition by April 2025. From attending regular appraisal provider forums run by the GMC, we’re advised that the sooner this can be implemented into the software, the better. A reasonable timeframe, therefore, would be to update the domains within PReP in time for the April 2024 cycle. This would apply to the association of supporting information, input (original version) and output form. We will be working on these updates over the next few months, but please get in touch if you have any questions in the meantime.