Tomorrow’s Doctors sets out the General Medical Council’s (GMC) requirements for the knowledge, skills and behaviours of undergraduate medical students and for the delivery of teaching, learning and assessment. These standards provide the framework that UK Medical Schools use to design their own detailed curricula and schemes of assessment.

Tomorrow’s Doctors is a crucially important document for both medical schools and students; it not only sets the standards students must achieve by the time they graduate, but also provides the framework on which UK medical schools base their curricula.  

The outcomes set out for medical students reflects the unique combination of skills, attributes and competencies doctors require, as outlined in the Role of the Doctor Consensus Statement agreed by the profession in October 2008. 

The GMC completed a review of the 2003 edition of Tomorrow’s Doctors and subsequently published Tomorrow’s Doctors (2009) in September 2009. Medical Schools are working towards full implementation of the new guidance by 2011/2012.

Tomorrow’s Doctors will be an extremely important document throughout your time at medical school and it would be useful to look through this document at the skills and attributes you will need to develop, as well as the behaviour expected of you as a medical student.

The GMC has also provided supplementary advice to medical schools relating to assessment, clinical placements, developing teachers and trainers, and patient and public involvement.

More information can be found on the GMC’s website