Established 1978
The examination is designed as a postgraduate qualification primarily for members of the healthcare professions although it is open to a number of other graduates and certain undergraduates. The Diploma was revised extensively in 1993.

The Diploma is intended to indicate familiarity with contemporary philosophy of medicine and in particular with the philosophical aspects of problems within the theory and practice of medicine and healthcare; and with selected aspects of the history of philosophy related to those problems.

Candidates for the examination must have participated in the Society's Faculty's Course in the Ethics and Philosophy of Healthcare. The aim of the course is to introduce participants to some aspects of philosophy relevant to healthcare; to give an opportunity to reflect on practice; to consider critically some concepts and arguments used in discussion of healthcare and some of its dilemmas; to articulate and to defend points of view of their own, while taking counter-arguments into account and bearing in mind the grounds and limits of argument.