Ethics and Professionalism Courses for Allied Health Practitioners in Australia

Most allied health practitioners work under one document, the shared Code of conduct. Twelve National Boards adopted it, and it has applied since 29 June 2022. Ten of the twelve regulate professions on this page: paramedicine, osteopathy, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practice, podiatry, chiropractic, optometry, physiotherapy, medical radiation practice, Chinese medicine and occupational therapy. The remaining two adopters are the Dental Board and the Pharmacy Board.

Psychology is the outlier. Since 1 December 2025 the regulatory code for psychologists has been the Code of conduct for psychologists, written by their Board, in place of the APS Code of Ethics. Medicine, nursing and midwifery also have codes of their own.

Why one code across professions helps

On a multidisciplinary team, your physiotherapy, occupational therapy, podiatry and paramedic colleagues answer to the same written standard as you, which makes common policies and joint training easier. A decision or piece of guidance about one shared-code profession is often directly useful to another.

Remember that the shared code is about conduct rather than clinical skill. Clinical capability is described separately, in each profession's own competency or capability framework, and some Boards add statements on specific issues, for instance chiropractic treatment of children.

Clinical care heads every column, so the interesting information is in second place. It is also a practical guide to choosing ethics learning that matches your actual exposure.

• Physiotherapists and chiropractors see boundary violations in second place. In both, treatment routinely involves physical contact, partial undressing and private sessions.
• Occupational therapists see documentation second, which makes sense when their reports feed funding and safety decisions that other people make.
• Optometrists and psychologists see communication second. In both, the dispute is often about what the client actually understood.

Most notifications still end without further regulatory action, often because the practitioner has already dealt with the issue. That is the real benefit of targeted learning and honest reflection undertaken early.

NSW has run a co-regulatory system since 2010. There, the Health Care Complaints Commission shares the work with fifteen profession-specific councils (psychology, podiatry, physiotherapy, optometry and occupational therapy each have one, for example), and the Health Professional Councils Authority provides their support.

Queensland moved to co-regulation on 1 July 2014. The Office of the Health Ombudsman receives every complaint, consults Ahpra and then refers the matter to the relevant Board or keeps it; serious matters remain with the Ombudsman and may go to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal. In all other states and territories, Ahpra and the Boards manage notifications directly, which is why national figures exceed the numbers lodged with Ahpra alone.