To practise medicine safely in the UK, doctors must be fit to practice. In other words, they must be competent in what they do. In order to demonstrate your fitness to practice medicine in the UK, you will need to give the GMC details of all your postgraduate medical experience, non-medical experience and certain other activities for the last 5 years or since you graduated. The GMC will likely ask for employer references to cover non-medical work or medical practice for which you did not hold registration. In addition, the GMC will need a certificate of good standing from each medical regulatory authority you have been registered or licensed with.
If you would like to know more about what 'fitness to practise' implies and what Good Medical Practice is, please read this short document published by the GMC.
Let's see what kind of evidence of your fitness to practise you will need to submit to the GMC.
Your declaration
There are 10 questions in the declaration, 3 of which are for health and 7 for fitness to practise. If you answer ‘Yes’ to any of those questions, you would be required to provide further information or evidence. Please keep in mind that minor offences must be mentioned, but do not overshare. The GMC wants to know whether you are an honest and safe doctor, so there is specific information the GMC wants to hear from you.
This comprehensive GMC guide contains a very detailed section for each question you are asked on your application, so to save your time we will not duplicate this information in this blog post. We just recommend you read the guide thoroughly before filling in the declaration.
Certificates of good standing
When applying for GMC registration, you will be asked to name all countries where you have practised medicine or held medical registration even without practising medicine in the last 5 years. You will need to provide a certificate of good standing from the medical regulatory authorities for each country where you have been registered at that time, even if you have not been practising there.
If you do not know the contact details of the medical regulatory authorities for each country, you can use this CGS directory as a guide. In case there is no medical regulatory authority in the country to give you a certificate of good standing, you will then need to ask your employers to complete the employer reference form.
When requesting a certificate of good standing, you need to know what information the GMC is looking to see in the certificate. As a rule, the following should be covered and confirmed:
all of your work in that country or state
you are entitled to practise medicine in that country
you have not been disqualified, suspended or prohibited from practising medicine
the regulatory authority is not aware of any matters that raise doubts about your good standing.
Key points on a certificate of good standing:
must be issued by the medical regulator in every country you have practised in or have been registered in over the last 5 years
must be an original copy
only valid for 3 months after the date of issue
if possible, ask the medical regulator to email your certificate of good standing directly to the GMC.
If you missed the GMC registration webinar and would like to know the main steps you need to take in order to obtain full registration to practice, you can watch it for free here.
Having questions?
1. You can always ask our friendly team members, mentors and senior IMGs for advice here. Our guidance is free.
2. We encourage you to watch the Q&A session from a 1-hour interactive and engaging webinar with the GMC on the GMC registration process.
3. Read the full guidance on evidence of your fitness to practise here.
4. Read the full guidance to find out what you do and don’t need to tell the GMC in your declaration here.
In our next post, we will provide full guidance on how to make your online application for the GMC.