Ethics and professionalism education for doctors

Every registered medical practitioner in Australia is regulated by the Medical Board of Australia under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law. Ahpra provides the administrative machinery: it receives registration applications and notifications, runs investigations, keeps the public register and supports the Board and its committees. The Board sets the standards that you are measured against.

The central document is Good medical practice: a code of conduct for doctors in Australia, in effect from 1 October 2020. It applies to all doctors in all roles, clinical and non-clinical, and a Board-approved code is admissible as evidence of the expected standard of professional conduct. In practice, that means if a notification is made about you, Ahpra, the Board, a panel or a tribunal will ask how your conduct compares with what the code says. The 2020 version added material on public comment, respectful workplace culture and the doctor's own health that is easy to overlook if you last read the code as a student.

Alongside the code sit the Board's registration standards. For medical practitioners these cover continuing professional development, recency of practice, professional indemnity insurance arrangements, English language skills (mainly relevant at initial registration) and criminal history. Each year at renewal you make formal declarations about CPD, recency, insurance, health impairment and criminal history. A careless declaration can create a problem that is more serious than the shortfall it describes.

Where you practise also matters. In New South Wales, complaints about doctors are handled through the Health Care Complaints Commission and the Medical Council of NSW rather than Ahpra alone. In Queensland, complaints go first to the Office of the Health Ombudsman, which decides whether to keep a matter or refer it to Ahpra and the Board. The same code applies everywhere, but the process and the letters you receive will look different.

The Board's CPD standard deliberately moved doctors away from simply attending education and toward reviewing performance and measuring outcomes. A good ethics course should therefore do more than give you information. Each of our medical courses ends with a written reflective account and closes every section with prompts that ask you to compare the standard with what you actually do on a Tuesday afternoon.

Here is a practical way to use them across a year:

• At the start of the CPD year, complete the self-audit in the professionalism course and add one or two specific gaps to your professional development plan.
• During the year, complete the relevant course and keep the certificate and reflective account in one place, such as the CPD Portfolio.
• Afterwards, discuss the reflective account with a colleague or in a peer group, or follow up a change you made with a small audit of your own records. That is where the performance review and outcome measurement categories come in.

Practitioner Ethics is an independent education provider. Our courses are not accredited by Ahpra, the Medical Board, the Australian Medical Council, any specialist college or any CPD home, and none of those bodies runs an accreditation scheme for individual CPD courses. You decide whether a course fits your plan, record the time you genuinely spend, and your CPD home determines how it is categorised.

Doctors in training

Interns and doctors in some prevocational positions are exempt from the Board's CPD requirement because their training program covers it. Ethics and professionalism still matter early: many of the scenarios that later become notifications, such as prescribing for a friend or signing a document you have not checked, begin as small favours during training. Our ethics course for doctors is a practical complement to hospital teaching.

International medical graduates

Australian expectations on consent, confidentiality, chaperones, certificates, conflicts of interest and cultural safety may differ from those in the country where you trained. The doctors' courses explain the Australian position plainly and note where state and territory law differs.

Practice principals and medical directors

If you set policies for others, you also shape the conditions in which they make decisions. Policies on certificates, gifts, conflicts, billing and conscientious objection are all covered, and our team licences let a practice give every doctor and nurse the same reference point.

Late-career doctors

In December 2025 the Medical Board announced that it would not introduce mandatory health checks for doctors aged over 70, and would instead support a profession-led approach working with colleges, doctors' health services, CPD homes and defence organisations. Reflecting honestly on your scope, recency and health is part of what the code already expects.

Doctors with conditions or a notification

If you have conditions or undertakings on your registration, or are responding to a notification, the guidance on our notification help page and the programs below are the place to start. Always take advice from your medical defence organisation before responding to Ahpra.

Good medical practice expects doctors to look after their own health and wellbeing, to have their own general practitioner and not to self-prescribe. Many doctors delay care because they fear that seeing a GP will trigger a mandatory notification. Since the 2020 amendments to the National Law, a treating practitioner must make a mandatory notification about a practitioner-patient's impairment only where there is a substantial risk of harm to the public, and Western Australia exempts treating practitioners altogether. The purpose of the scheme is to protect the public from substantial risk, not to punish illness. Doctors who seek help early usually remain safe to practise.

Confidential support is available through Drs4Drs, the national doctors' health service, as well as through your own GP and employee assistance programs. Our course on mandatory notifications and practitioner health explains the thresholds in detail, and the health and impairment page sets out how the National Law treats impairment.