The General Medical Council

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The role of the GMC (established 1868) is broadly:

• to set professional standards of practice
• to ensure that those allowed to practise medicine
(registered medical practitioners) are fit to do so,
in terms of knowledge, skills and their behaviour
• to maintain a register of doctors who are licensed to
practise medicine in the UK. It is illegal to practise
medicine without a licence in the UK
• to supervise standards of undergraduate and postgraduate
education – the GMC sets out a syllabus
for medical schools to follow, and since 2008,
now also works with the Royal Colleges to ensure
appropriate standards for specialist training and
continuing medical education. (The GMC has taken
over this role from the Postgraduate Medical Education
and Training Board.) This latter role includes
supervising revalidation (see below), supervision
of doctors’ fitness to practise after qualification as
a general practitioner (GP) or specialist
• to enforce professional discipline – the ultimate
sanction is to ‘strike a doctor off the register’, either
temporarily or permanently. More often, however,
the GMC will issue a warning or recommend remedial
action, such as a supervised period of practise, or
additional training in the area of deficiency.

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