The GP revalidation process started in 2013 and all doctors will be revalidated over the subsequent three years. Thereafter it will be on a five-yearly cycle.
What you may not realise is that there is no actual 'revalidation' meeting. It will actually be your collective appraisals prior to your revalidation date that will form the basis on which the Responsible Officer (Area Team of NHS England), will recommend you for revalidation to the GMC.
Revalidation requires several steps:
You are not limited to the 5 appraisers that the Area Team suggest to you. We believe that you should have the ability to choose an appraiser that you feel comfortable with.
The supporting information needed for appraisals:
1. A satisfactory quantity and quality of continuing professional development (CPD) - Quantity: 50 credits per annum covering the whole scope of your work - Quality: there must be evidence of learning and reflection
The CPD log must cover the whole scope of your medical work as well as your core work as a GP, eg occupational health or training.
2. Quality improvement: This may be a change made within the practice, such as a new protocol, that improves safety or quality or a completed audit cycle. A completed audit cycle includes an initial audit, implementation and a re-audit. This must be done once within a cycle. Other examples are:
(i) Clinical audit – evidence of effective participation in clinical audit or an equivalent quality improvement exercise that measures the care with which an individual doctor has been directly involved (ii) Review of clinical outcomes – where robust, attributable and validated data are available. This could include morbidity and mortality statistics or complication rates where these are routinely recorded for local or national reports (iii) Case review or discussion – a documented account of interesting or challenging cases that a doctor has discussed with a peer, another specialist or within a multi-disciplinary team (iv) Audit and monitor the effectiveness of a teaching programme (v) Evaluate the impact and effectiveness of a piece of health policy or management practice
The GMC has produced this guide: Supporting information for appraisal and revalidation
3. Also please take along to each appraisal two significant events that you have had either personal involvement in or responsibility for.
4. Multisource feedback from colleagues and patients. This must be done once within a five year cycle. There are several tools available and no official one at present. To get meaningful feedback, you might want to use one of those recommended by the RCGP.
5. A statement of probity made by yourself that there is nothing that questions your fitness to practice such as ill-health and outstanding concerns.
6. Make sure that you have done your BLS training within the previous 12 months (you will need the date) and completed face to face or online training for Child Protection LEVELS 2 & 3 within the previous 3 years. You will however need to provide a certificate or evidence that the training has been completed. Click here for a suitable online resource.
In future, all appraisals will need to be completed electronically. There are several online portfolios and electronic templates available on Anglian GP revalidation pages.
The full cycle audit does not have to be done by you personally and can be done at practice level. The requirements are that, at the very least, you are involved in the choice of topic, the standards set, that you collectively review the findings and decide on some changes that can be made, that the audit is then re-run and the changes demonstrated.
Suitable topics of locums and OOH GPs are mentioned in the RCGP Guide.
See page 21 in the version 7 of the guide.
The RCGP believes that GPs should be able, if they wish and they have the expertise, to include a quality improvement project as their audit. A quality improvement project can be designed to review and improve systems of care and may include a review of pathways of care experienced by a specific group of patients. A description of a quality improvement programme) should include the:
- knowledge, skills and performance - safety and quality - communication, partnership and teamwork and maintaining trust.
For GPs, GMC requirements for mandatory training are basic life support annually and Level 3 safeguarding children 3-yearly. Your practice or other posts you may hold might in addition require you to undertake for example regular fire safety training and/or infection control training. So what is mandatory may vary from individual to individual. See below CQCs view on this matter. Click here for CQC mythbuster 70 This is an extract from the CQC mythbuster 70: "As we have said, we do not have a definitive list of mandatory training. However, these are examples of training that we would expect to see evidence of:
With regard to the colleague questionnaire the RCGP has recommended a number of validated questionnaires you can use. Amongst them and free to download is the GMC's colleague questionnaire. If you decide to use it, we would recommend that it is handed out to twenty people who are familiar with you in a work environment, either exclusively at your practice or distributed across organisations for which you work. It needs fifteen completed replies to be valid. Ideally pass it to a colleague (clinical or non-clinical) for random distribution to doctors, nurses/ HCAs and administrative staff. The results should go back to them in preparation for feedback to you. If you like you can use this simple Excel spreadsheet for inputting the results including free text comments. This way your raters can be honest in their feedback as you will not see the original forms and recognise their writing!
Further information on alternative validated questionnaires including those done by commercial organisations for a fee is available in the link below to the RCGP guidance.
See page 23 in version 7 of the guide.
With regard to the patient questionnaire the RCGP has recommended a number of validated questionnaires you can use. Amongst them and free to download is the GMC's patient questionnaire. If you decide to use it, it is recommended that it is handed out to forty consecutive patients and thirty completed questionnaires would be considered a valid return. For more information on the GMC patient and colleague questionnaires please see the link below. The advantage of using a commercial questionnaire such as the CFEP for the PSQ, is that your results will be benchmarked against your peers nationally and will make the results easier to interpret and more meaningful. It is also a lot more work than the MSF if you do it yourself.
See page 24 in version 7 of the guide.
RCGP Revalidation and Appraisal Mythbusters Please note that all links open in a new window.
Safeguarding Working Together to Safeguard Children
RO at Area Team: Dr Alistair Lipp Assisted by: Dr Ian Gibson, Dr Leonie Prasad and Dr James Hickling
Appraisals general email: england.ea-appraisals@nhs.net Tel: 0113 825 5151
East Anglia Appraisal Admin Team NHS England - Midlands and East (East) West Wing, Victoria House Capital Park Fulbourn Cambridge CB21 5XA
Main phone numbers: tel. 01138 255141 or tel. 01138 252424
For more information, visit Anglian GP which has regular updates.