Ethics and professional conduct
Integrity, probity, accountability and respect applied to boundaries, confidentiality, candour, conflicts of interest and ethical decision-making in Canadian practice
Physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and all other regulated health professionals in Canada, including those facing a complaint or fitness-to-practise concern.
Structured learning and a written reflection to show insight after a complaint, an investigation or a college inquiry.
Focused learning on a core standard of practice, with a certificate and reflection for your portfolio.
Professional ethics is the shared framework of values that defines a profession and earns public trust, and it reaches well beyond compliance with rules. This course explains the meaning and functions of professional ethics and the four principles at its core, integrity, probity, accountability and respect, including cultural safety informed by the TRC Calls to Action and In Plain Sight. It then applies them to the areas where ethical concerns most often arise in Canadian practice.
It covers professional boundaries with patients and colleagues, including Ontario's sexual abuse provisions and mandatory reporting duties; confidentiality, honesty and the duty of candour, with a province-by-province guide to health privacy statutes and a worked disclosure case; conflicts of interest with a practical self-check; ethical decision-making using the IDEA framework; and ethics in digital and organizational contexts, including virtual care across provincial borders, organizational pressure, moral distress and workplace culture.
Six scenarios, from an incomplete record and an expensive gift to a pressured discharge and a financial interest in a recommended product, show stronger and weaker responses. The final section explains reflection, the points that tend to show genuine insight when a college reviews a concern, and remediation within a just culture. The course is for physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and all regulated health professionals, including those facing a complaint or fitness-to-practise concern.
9 sections · 39 lessons · 2 hours (estimated) · 10-question final assessment
Final assessment
10scenario-based questions
Certificate of completion
A certificate of completion for your learning portfolio.
The course includes a structured reflective account template: guided prompts to record what you learned, how you will apply it and how the change will show in your practice. It gives you written evidence of insight after a concern, and a ready record for your CPD portfolio.
Write it in your own words and leave out anything that could identify a patient, a colleague or a case. If you have an open complaint or case, talk to your adviser before reflecting on it in writing.
This course is for all regulated professionals and focuses on the shared principles of integrity, probity, accountability and respect, and how they apply to boundaries, confidentiality, candour, conflicts of interest and digital and organizational settings. The profession-specific courses apply each profession's own code and college standards in more detail.
The IDEA framework: Identify the facts and the ethical issue, Determine the relevant principles and options, Explore and weigh the options, and Act and then reflect. The course works through it with a nurse asked by a patient's son for details of his mother's diagnosis.
Yes. A province-by-province summary covers PHIPA in Ontario, Alberta's Health Information Act, Saskatchewan's and Manitoba's statutes, the Atlantic provinces, British Columbia's PIPA and FIPPA, Quebec's own legislation, the territories, and when federal PIPEDA applies. Your college or privacy commissioner can confirm the law for your setting.
It defines conflicts, including perceived ones, lists common scenarios such as financial interests, gifts, self-referral and organizational targets, and gives a five-question self-check, covering disclosure, alternatives, policy and documentation, to use before a recommendation.
Yes. Using Ontario's Health Professions Procedural Code as an example, it explains mandatory revocation for defined acts of sexual abuse of a patient, the duty to report reasonable grounds that another regulated professional has sexually abused a patient, and the rule that a person remains a patient for at least one year after the relationship ends. Other provinces have comparable provisions.
A worked candour case on a pharmacy dispensing error and six scenarios: an incomplete record, a grateful patient's expensive gift, a pressured discharge, a social media post, a disrespected colleague and a conflict of interest in prescribing.
Yes. The final section explains reflection, the specific points that tend to show genuine insight to a college, remediation and a just culture. Colleges decide what they accept; the course is education and does not replace advice from your protective association.
About 2 hours online and self-paced, with knowledge checks, a written reflection and a final assessment of 10 questions (80% to pass). The fee is CA$95 and you receive a certificate of completion.
Every legal and regulatory point comes from primary sources: provincial and territorial health professions statutes, the regulatory colleges' standards and codes, and federal and provincial privacy law. Anything we cannot confirm is left out.
Lessons, scenarios and assessment questions are written by us for each edition separately, then checked for accuracy, teaching quality and fair assessment before publication.
When a code, standard or law changes, the affected courses are reviewed and updated. Reported errors in legal or regulatory facts are corrected first.
A practical grounding in healthcare ethics for any regulated profession: principles, college standards, consent, candour, MAID and remediation.
The four principles in practice: consent and capacity, confidentiality and the duty to warn, truth-telling, fair allocation and conflicts of interest.
Boundaries with patients and colleagues: power, gifts, dual relationships, social media, workplace conduct and the zero-tolerance rules on sexual abuse.
