Professionalism - UK Foundation Programme

This section is about your performance as a professional whilst you have been at medical school. You are expected to behave professionally in preparation for future practice as a doctor.

Medical schools monitor professionalism and must not graduate students they believe are not fit to practice. However, in most cases unprofessional behaviour resulting in a warning or sanction is not serious enough to prevent the student from graduating. Foundation schools recognise that people make mistakes and that some students have required more support in developing professional skills than others.

This information is not shared to make judgements against you but is important as it ensures the following:

Your foundation school can place you in an environment which provides additional support in relation to professionalism if necessary.

You can be provided with additional educational opportunities to support your learning about (and your acquisition of) professional values during F1.

Behaviours observed in F1 can be considered in the context of your professionalism history. This may reveal behaviours to be part of a pattern which would not otherwise be apparent or may allay concerns about observed behaviours which may have been investigated and explained during your time at medical school.

Patient safety is not affected; it is important that you are monitored during your F1 year to ensure that you understand the impact unprofessional behaviour can have on patients and colleagues, including other F1 doctors with whom you work.

In this section you are asked to include formal outcomes (including warnings or sanctions) received from your medical school in relation to any investigation into your professionalism or fitness to practice.

It might help you to consider the threshold for fitness to practice which is shown on page 80 of the GMC and MSC joint publication Professional behaviour and fitness to practice: Guidance for medical schools and their students.

You should declare the outcomes of investigations that progressed beyond the threshold below.

Examples of the type of outcome you should include in the form are:

Written warnings.

Being given set conditions that you must comply with to stay on the course.

Temporary suspension from the course.

You are not expected to declare verbal warnings.

In this section you should not declare anything that relates solely to your health. This should be reported in the relevant Health and Welfare section of the form.

Most declarations on STEP forms do not require foundation schools to take any further action but there are several supportive interventions foundation schools can put in place if they feel it is necessary, such as:

Providing you with access to professional skills coaching if your professionalism issues at medical school stemmed from something like poor time management.

Provide an educational supervisor that has experience of supporting trainees to develop their professionalism skills.