About us

Antibiotics were decades from discovery and the NHS a distant dream when we were established in 1858, entrusted to take charge of medical registration and education across the UK. While so much in medicine and society has changed since then, our purpose would still be recognisable to one of our founding members: we work with doctors, patients, and other stakeholders to support good, safe patient care.

We set the standards doctors and those who train them need to meet, and help them achieve them. And if there are concerns these standards may not be met or that public confidence in doctors may be at risk, we can investigate, and take action if needed.

Watch the video below to learn more about our key functions.

There are more than 350,000 doctors on the UK medical register. To serve them and other stakeholders in the UK’s healthcare systems, we employ around 1700 staff working in London, Manchester, Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and on the frontline across the UK.

Our strategic priorities are set out in Our Strategy 2021-2025, and our medium term objectives are described in our business plan.

We’ll soon become a multi-professional regulator, taking on the regulation of physician associates and anaesthesia associates in addition to doctors.

There couldn’t be a better time to join us as we work to implement an increasingly effective, relevant and compassionate approach to regulation.

We have five core organisational values underpinning everything we do:

Integrity

We’re honest and share what we see.

Excellence

We are committed to excellence in everything that we do.

Collaboration

We are a listening and learning organisation.

Fairness

We treat everyone fairly.

Transparency

We are honest and strive to be open and transparent.

We work based on what we call OneGMC Behaviours, based around four themes and setting out the attitudes and ways of working expected of all in the organisation, namely:

  • Being inclusive
  • Continuosly learning
  • Thriving together
  • Leading the way

We want every decision we make, every interaction we have, every email we write and every phone call we make, to embody our values. It’s important that each of us acts in a way that is consistent with our values. We regularly evaluate how we are living up to these values and we seek the views of others too.

Useful links and documents