A Study of Good Moral Character and Professional Integrity Requirements in Healthcare Occupational Licensing

Revised September 2026
Researcher: SkillEdge Research and Consulting

This study offers a systematic, multi-state look at how U.S. healthcare licensing boards articulate and apply good moral character requirements, framing them within the broader construct of professional integrity.

Executive Summary

Good moral character (GMC) has long been among the most common requirements in occupational regulation, historically conditioning entry to most licensed occupations on a showing of GMC or its functional equivalent (Rhode, 2018). Over the past decade, however, roughly two dozen states have moved away from open-ended GMC and "moral turpitude" criteria toward more objective standards asking whether prior conduct is directly related to the duties of the job (CCRC, 2022; IJ, 2023).

Public and patient safety is paramount in the health professions, yet no comprehensive, multi-state account describes how healthcare-related licensing boards currently define and apply GMC-related requirements. This gap matters because GMC sits at the center of a genuine policy tension: it functions both as a shield to protect the public by keeping high-risk individuals out of positions of trust and as a potential barrier that can exclude rehabilitated, qualified applicants for reasons bearing little relationship to job performance. The underlying challenge is one of calibration, balancing the consistency of bright-line rules against the fairness of individualized, situation-sensitive judgment.

Accordingly, this study provides an updated, systematic description of how U.S. healthcare licensing boards articulate and apply GMC-related requirements, drawing on publicly available sources, and broadens the lens to treat GMC as one subcomponent of a wider construct of professional integrity.

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