The GMC has developed the Generic Professional Capabilities (GPC) framework with the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC) to describe the fundamental, career-long, generic capabilities required of every doctor. The framework describes the requirement to develop and maintain key professional values and behaviours, knowledge, and skills. GPCs also represent a system-wide, regulatory response to the most common contemporary concerns about patient safety and fitness to practise within the medical profession. The framework will be relevant at all stages of medical education, training and practice.

At the heart of the GPC framework are the principles, duties and responsibilities set out in Good medical practice (GMP). The GPC framework articulates GMP in the form of high-level educational outcomes which will be incorporated into curricula, and will inform assessment. 

The GPC framework describes nine domains with associated descriptors outlining the capabilities and expected levels of performance and behaviour required to meet the GMC's regulatory standards. These attributes represent the minimum, generic standards expected of all medical practitioners achieving a CCT or its equivalent, and are common across all medical specialties.

The nine domains of the GPC framework can be viewed below:

The curricula will be assessed by High Level Outcomes, which are included in the form of Capabilities in Practice (CiPs), CiPs describe the professional tasks or work within the scope of postgraduate pathology training; they are based on the format of entrustable professional activities, which are a method of using the professional judgement of appropriately trained, expert assessors as a key aspect of the validity of assessment and a defensible way of forming global judgements of professional performance.

Each CiP is underpinned by a set of descriptors. The intended function of descriptors is to outline the minimum level of knowledge, skills and attitudes which should be demonstrated by trainees. Descriptors may be used by trainees as guidance in evidencing how their performance meets or exceeds the minimum expected level of for their year of training. Descriptors are not intended to be exhaustive, and there are many more examples that would provide equally valid evidence of performance.

Many of the CiP descriptors refer to patient centred care and shared decision making. This is to emphasise the importance of patients being at the centre of decisions about their own treatment and care, by exploring care or treatment options and their risks and benefits and discussing choices available.

The specialty CiPs repeatedly refer to the need to demonstrate professional behaviour with regard to patients, carers, colleagues and others, referencing GMP principles of professionalism: Good doctors work in partnership with patients and respect their rights to privacy and dignity. They treat each patient as an individual. They do their best to make sure all patients receive good care and treatment that will support them to live as well as possible, whatever their illness or disability. Appropriate professional behaviour should reflect the principles of GMP and GPC.

In order to complete training and be recommended to the GMC for the award of CCT and entry to the specialist register, the doctor must demonstrate that they are capable of unsupervised practice in all generic and specialty CiPs.