The course is designed to help you:
1. Understand the broad concepts of Medical Professionalism
2. Apply the knowledge gained to your own practice
This course is an Open Online Course (OOC) and was prepared by Professors Kichu Nair, Tim Wilkinson, Dick Heller, and Drs Mohamed Haroon and Sergio Diez. It has been adopted from Peoples-uni and was further developed by NextGenU.org (NGU).

There are five (5) modules to complete, which include:

Module 1: Introduction to Medical Professionalism and Definitions
Module 2: Altruism and Commitment to Patients’ Interests.
Module 3: Physician Self-Regulation and Maintenance of Competence
Module 4: Civic Engagement
Module 5: Relevance to Today/Tomorrow

Approximate time for completion of this course is 9 hours at an average reading rate of 144 words/minute.

Engaging with this course
- To register for this course, complete the registration form. Begin the course with Module 1. For each lesson, read the description.
- Each lesson comprises introductory remarks. You can click on the collections of resources in each module.
- There is a forum on each module for reflection, and you will be able to add a new topic or respond to a previous one. You may want to share your learning from this and other readings, comment on the topics from your own experience, comment on others' posts, or provide feedback on how we can improve the content and/or presentation.
- There is a final quiz to assess your understanding of some important concepts. Click on the hyperlinks to take you to these items in each topic.
Requirements to obtain the certificate

You may browse this course for free to learn for your personal enrichment. There are no requirements.

To obtain a certificate, a learner must successfully complete:
- All reading requirements
- All discussion forums
- The final exam with a minimum of 70% and a maximum of 3 attempts and
- The self and course evaluation forms
Subscribe to our newsletter to be notified of future updates, new courses, and to be part of our community.
Module 1: Introduction to Medical Professionalism and Definitions

Competence (Learning Outcome):

Be able to discuss differing definitions of medical professionalism and the scope of the subject.

Module 1: Introduction to Medical Professionalism and Definitions