Professional Ethics and Standards of Conduct
What the exam tests
Professional Ethics and Standards of Conduct tests fiduciary conduct: putting patients first, maintaining boundaries, avoiding exploitation, billing honestly, and responding to impaired or incompetent colleagues. Ethics questions ask what a reasonable, ethical registrant would do, not merely what is legal.
Core rules
- The patient–chiropractor relationship is fiduciary. Conflicts of interest must be avoided or managed transparently.
- Sexual or romantic relationships with current patients are prohibited; even apparent favouritism or boundary blurring is risky.
- Gifts, bartering, and dual relationships must not influence care. A large gift can create a sense of obligation; bartering can exploit a power imbalance.
- Billing must reflect services actually provided. Upcoding, phantom visits, and routine waiver of co-payments are integrity issues.
- Registrants must report colleagues who are incompetent, impaired, or practising beyond scope, usually to the regulator, while respecting confidentiality.
- Social media and electronic communication must preserve professionalism and privacy.
Worked example
A long-term patient offers an expensive watch after a successful course of care. The chiropractor declines the watch, explains the policy, and suggests a card or a donation instead. The reasoning is that the offer is not illegal, but accepting it may create a sense of indebtedness and blur therapeutic boundaries. Declining politely protects the relationship and avoids any appearance of exploitation.
Marks-losing traps
Treating 'the patient consented' as a defence to boundary violations; bartering without valuation; posting patient stories without consent; making derogatory comments about other practitioners; and failing to act on clear evidence of a colleague's impairment.