What is Fitness to Practice?  

All students undertaking Dentistry, Education, Medicine or Physician's Assistant programmes must comply with the University’s Fitness to Practice (FtP) guidelines.  

These professions often require working with vulnerable or distressed individuals. There is a high level of trust required within the profession and therefore students of these subjects are also held to a high level of trust. Student standards are set by the profession’s regulatory body.  

If a concern has been raised about your behaviour or attitude that could lead to a risk in public safety or public perception of the profession it is likely that your School will investigate these concerns through the FtP guidance. 

Ultimately FtP’s are used to assess and manage risk. Your role within this process is to reassure the FtP panel that you would pose no or low risk if allowed to continue with your studies.  

At each stage of the process you will be given an opportunity to respond to the concerns. It is recommended that you prepare for these meetings ahead of time and consider how you can show insight and remediation.  

Insight  

What went wrong? 

• Be open, honest and show genuine remorse.  

• Accept that you should and could have done something differently 

What was the impact of your actions?  

• Demonstrate your understanding of the impact (or potential impact) of your actions 

• Who was impacted - consider apologising to relevant parties and showing empathy  

• What Professionalism standard was, or could have been, impacted? E.g. public perception, patient trust, etc. 

What could have been done differently? 

• If you could go back, what changes or different decisions would you have made?  

Remediation  

What are you doing to ensure this does not happen again? 

• Examples of actions:  

• That you have support systems in place,  

• That you are willing to engage with training or learning,  

• That you will accept increased supervision or sign in requirements, etc.  

 

To decide the quality of the remediation, the panel will gauge if the undertaken actions are:  

• Relevant – does the actions directly address the concerns?  

• Measurable – is there objective evidence that can support the panels understanding of the remediation efforts?  

• Effective - how has any learning been applied or reflected on?  

 

You can find additional information on the GMC website here. 

 

How can I get help? 

During FtP processes you are entitled to bring an individual to act as your support. 

You can access support from a number of places within the university.  

• Student Support - student.support@abdn.ac.uk   

• Dr Wendy Lowe (Medicine, Dentistry and Physicians assistants) – wendy.lowe@abdn.ac.uk 

• Your Regent or Personal Tutor  

• Students’ Union Advice – ausaadvice@abdn.ac.uk 

We can help throughout the FtP process; by explaining the procedures and helping you prepare the strongest evidence. Every FtP is different; get in touch for specific information and advice relating to your case.