Medical Ethics Course for Health Practitioners facing a Council or Board investigation, complaint or allegation

Because lawful and ethical are different questions and the Act lets the authority ask the second. A consent that was obtained and not understood, a disclosure the Privacy Code allowed and the patient did not expect, a relationship no rule forbade — each can fall short of your authority’s standard of ethical conduct. The course opens with the difference and how a response answers the ethical question.

It is one dated item, and it teaches the rest: a reflection that reconstructs the decision and names the principles, CPD targeted to consent, confidentiality or boundaries as the concern requires, supervision with reports, and an audit of consent conversations or disclosures repeated over time. The certificate records two CPD hours on the subject. No provider is accredited by any Council or Board, and no course decides a matter. What every authority, a Committee and the Tribunal weigh is dated, targeted remediation with reflection that engages your own code — and this course is written to the ground every authority’s standard shares on this subject, so the connection to yours is plain. Check the wording of any direction with your indemnity insurer, union, professional association or lawyer before you rely on it.

Yes — before anything goes to your Council or Board, a competence reviewer, a Professional Conduct Committee, the Tribunal or your employer. Your indemnity insurer, your union or professional association, or a lawyer should read a response before it is sent, and it should still be in your own words when they have. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and no course determines the outcome of a matter.

By reconstructing it. Which principles were in play, which gave way and why, who was consulted, what the patient said, and what you would do now — including, where it applies, the same thing for the same reasons. The authorities read a reconstruction that describes the tension between two goods as ethical reasoning, and one that defends the outcome as its absence. The course teaches the reconstruction.

The decision reconstructed: the situation as it was, the options you saw, the principles in play and the one that gave way, who you consulted, what the patient and whānau said, the effect in their terms, what you understand now, and what has changed with dates. The course sets weak and strong ethical responses to the same decision side by side in medicine, nursing and dentistry.

Usually two, in tension. Consent engages autonomy, often against beneficence; confidentiality engages autonomy and non-maleficence; a boundary engages non-maleficence and probity; a resource decision engages justice. The course’s second section is written so that a practitioner can name the principles in their own decision, and the response section on this page sets out how they are used.

Yes — the course treats the collegial boundary as the fifth kind. A relationship with a colleague that influenced a referral, a concern not raised because of it, a decision deferred to keep the peace: each affected a patient’s care, and the authorities read it as an ethics matter. The nursing case comparison is professional respect for the same reason.

The drift recognised as yours and dated, the boundary restored and visible — a supervisor with a set interval, a protocol the practice follows, conduct over time — and CPD on boundaries with a reflection that names the principle. Every authority places the responsibility with the practitioner, and every authority has seen boundary lapses remediated in exactly this way.

Through autonomy and justice. For a Māori patient, autonomy runs through partnership with whānau where the patient wishes; justice is read through equity in what is offered; and cultural competence is a standard every authority sets beside ethical conduct. A decision that excluded whānau or offered less is an ethics concern to each authority, and the course reads the principles through Te Tiriti rather than adding it at the end.

This course is about the clinical decision: the principles at the bedside, consent and confidentiality as duties, the five boundaries in clinical relationships, and reconstructing a decision for a reader. Ethics for Healthcare Professionals is the broader map of the principles and the four codes. Professional Ethics is ethics in every role — clinical, supervisory, managerial, academic, research — through honesty, fairness, accountability and respect. Practitioners facing a clinical ethics concern usually start here.

All eighteen. Every authority under the Act sets standards of ethical conduct, every one names consent, confidentiality and boundaries, and the five principles sit beneath all of them. The course reads the Medical Council, Nursing Council, Pharmacy Council and Dental Council standards in their own words and the allied professions’ alongside.

The course is 2 CPD hours, self-paced, with twelve months’ access from purchase. The certificate is issued on completion, dated, with the course title and the CPD hours, for a response, a portfolio or your recertification.