Ethics and Professionalism Courses for Health Professionals in the UAE

Every complaint is measured against a set of written duties, and in the UAE those duties come in layers. Federal law sets the floor for everyone: the Medical Liability Decree-Law, the law for physicians and dentists, the law for nurses, midwives and allied health, and the pharmacy law. Each authority then adds its own standards.

• Dubai: the DHA Standards for Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, issued in July 2025 and in force since 3 September 2025, apply to every DHA licensee and build on federal law, the 2017 national Code and the Patient's Rights and Responsibilities Charter.
• Abu Dhabi: the DOH has no single code; professionals follow federal law and the 2017 national Code, together with DOH documents such as the Patient Consent Standard and the 2024 Healthcare Workforce Bioethics Guidelines.
• MOHAP: the national Code adopted by Ministerial Resolution No. 1448 of 2017 remains the federal reference point.
• Sharjah: no separate SHA code has been published; the SHA works with the federal laws and national texts listed on its laws page.
• Dubai Healthcare City: conduct has been framed by DHCC Healthcare Professionals Regulation No. 2 of 2013, and with licensing moving to the DHA, its Code is the standard to learn.

Our profession courses are written to these layers, so the scenarios use the duties your committee would actually apply.

On each profession page you will find the two core courses, the law they are written around and the supporting courses that matter most in that line of work.

• Doctors: a medical ethics course for doctors in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the Northern Emirates, plus a professionalism course for doctors in the UAE covering licensing, good standing, privileges and conduct online.
• Nurses and midwives: a nursing ethics course for the UAE built on Federal Law No. 6 of 2023, with scope, delegation, medicines and midwifery practice.
• Dentists: consent in the dental chair, honest treatment planning, fees and insurance, records and advertising.
• Pharmacists: supply, substitution, controlled medicines, counselling and commercial pressure under Federal Decree-Law No. 38 of 2024.
• Allied health professionals: working within the scope the PQR allows, consent, touch and boundaries in therapy, records and honest claims.

Ethics is about how you reason when the right course is not obvious: a family asking you to withhold a diagnosis, a patient refusing treatment, a request at the end of life. Professionalism is about how you conduct yourself across your working life: keeping your licence and good standing honest, staying within your scope and privileges, how you treat colleagues in a multinational team, and what you say online.

Complaints often touch both. A consent dispute raises an ethical question about autonomy and a professional question about what was explained and recorded, which is why each profession has one course of each kind.

If you can fit only one into this cycle, let your situation decide. The table is a starting point, not a rule.

Doctors have a 3-hour professionalism course of their own, Professional Standards for Physicians in the UAE, which adds privileges, supervision and teaching; the other professions share the 2-hour course. Taking the pair across two cycles spreads both the cost and the study time.

Two 2-hour courses work for anyone licensed in the UAE, including professionals in roles without a dedicated page. Healthcare Ethics in UAE Practice covers the core principles, a step-by-step method for dilemmas, culture, faith and family in decisions, end-of-life and organ donation law, and newer questions such as artificial intelligence. Professionalism in Practice for UAE Health Professionals covers licensing integrity, respect and accountability in the workplace, digital conduct and what happens when professionalism is questioned.

The DHA standards cover twelve areas, from acting in the patient's and the public's interest to research, supervision and insurance integrity. The duties that come up most in practice are short to state and harder to apply under pressure:

• informed consent before any examination, test, treatment or surgery, given freely;
• looking at a patient's information only when you are involved in their care or authorised to;
• never altering, falsifying or destroying records;
• no gifts, hospitality or other benefits that could sway, or seem to sway, your judgement, and no fee-splitting or kickbacks;
• keeping clear of personal or romantic ties with anyone you are currently treating, or with their close family;
• keeping patient information off social media and not giving individual clinical advice to the public there;
• reporting an impaired or unfit colleague where patients are at risk.

Breaches can bring warnings, suspension, revocation, fines or legal action. The courses for DHA-licensed professionals are gathered on the DHA page.

Whichever authority licenses you, some duties are written into federal law:

• work carefully and honestly to the standard of your profession, without discrimination or exploiting the patient, and record the patient's condition and history before diagnosis and treatment (Medical Liability Decree-Law, Arts 3 and 4);
• no treatment without consent outside the listed exceptions, no disclosure of patient secrets outside the permitted cases, and a third person present, or the patient's prior agreement, before examining someone of the other sex (Art. 5);
• for physicians and dentists, no self-advertising beyond what is regulated, no referral commissions and no steering patients to a pharmacy (Federal Law No. 5 of 2019);
• for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals, working within the licensed scope, keeping accurate records, protecting confidentiality and keeping up with developments in the specialty (Federal Law No. 6 of 2023, Art. 8);
• for anyone, no prescribing or recommending a medical product to benefit yourself (Federal Decree-Law No. 38 of 2024, Art. 42).

The Patient's Rights and Responsibilities Charter adds the patient's side: dignity, privacy, information before consent, non-discrimination and the right to refuse.

Consent, honesty, boundaries, privacy, disclosure after harm and online conduct are where ethical questions most often turn into complaints. Each of these shared courses takes one of them in depth, for all five professions.

Each authority counts continuing development its own way. The DHA sets annual points (40 for physicians and dentists, 20 for nurses and pharmacists, 10 for allied health), multiplied by the licence term, with at least 70% in your specialty and up to 30% general professional development. The DOH counts credits per two-year licence (80, 40 or 20 by profession), at least half of them from formal activity. MOHAP lists CME at renewal, the SHA refers to the minimum in the national PQR, and DHCR sets its own figures per renewal. MOHAP CPD and SHA licence renewal files also ask for valid medical liability insurance.

The DHA Code goes as far as making continuing learning one of its twelve standards.

Your licensing authority decides how any learning counts towards your CPD or a requirement it has set.

Never describe any certificate as something it is not when you upload it to Sheryan, TAMM or another portal: the DHA Manual treats a false CPD claim as a disciplinary matter for the Medical Practice Committee.

A course is easier to explain in an audit when the log entry does some of the explaining. For each one, record more than the title.

• Spread the learning. The DOH expects some learning in each year you practise, and a steady log reads better everywhere than a burst before renewal.
• Keep it ready for audit. The DOH expects a portfolio that can be audited, so file certificates and reflections where you can produce them quickly.
• Describe it accurately. Whatever you upload to Sheryan, TAMM or the SHA system should say exactly what the course was.

Your licensing authority decides how any learning counts towards your CPD or a requirement it has set.

1. Which authority licenses you? That decides which code and emirate rules the scenarios should follow.
2. What is your profession and setting? Start with your profession's ethics course; add the professionalism course for the conduct side.
3. Where are your gaps? Consent, confidentiality, records, prescribing and advertising are common; pick the supporting course that fits.
4. Is there a concern behind the learning? If so, the remediation courses page is the better place to start.

Courses are online and self-paced, in English, on any device, with 12 months' access. Each lesson has knowledge checks, UAE case studies and reflection prompts. The final assessment has 20 scenario questions and a pass mark of 80% (16 of 20). You then download a certificate of completion with the title, CPD hours and date, and a structured reflective account for your portfolio. Buying for a team? The cart takes AED 120 off 3 or more courses, AED 180 off 5 or more and AED 300 off 10 or more.

Go to your profession above. If you are new to the UAE or work across several teams, the shared core is a good first step. The full catalogue lists all 31 courses.