Revalidation - FAQ
All your revalidation questions answered.
General FAQ
What is revalidation?
Revalidation is the process by which doctors
will have to demonstrate to the GMC, normally every five years,
that they are up to date and fit to practise and complying with the
relevant professional standards.
Page Edit
As of November 2009 all practising GPs in the
UK received a license to practice from the GMC. With the
introduction of revalidation this license will demonstrate that GPs
are practising in accordance with the General Medical Council (GMC)
generic standards of practice outlined in the Good
Medical Practice and elaborated in Good Medical
Practice for General Practitioners . To be a GP a doctor
must also be on the GMC’s General Practice Register.
Revalidation is the process of re-licensure
which will involve the collection and submission of supporting
information to demonstrate that a doctor meets a series of
requirements relating to their practice. Further information
about supporting information requirements can be found in the
RCGP
Guide to the Revalidation of General Practitioners.
Will revalidation affect
me?
If you are a doctor holding registration with
a licence to practise, you will have to participate in revalidation
to retain your licence to practise.
What is the purpose of
Revalidation
The purpose of revalidation is to assure patients, employers and
other healthcare professionals that licensed doctors are up-to-date
and are practising to the appropriate professional standards.
Revalidation is a new way of regulating the medical profession
that will provide a focus for doctors' efforts to maintain and
improve their practice; facilitate the organisations in which
doctors work to support them in keeping their practice up to date;
and encourage patients and the public to provide feedback about the
medical care they receive from doctors. In these ways, revalidation
will contribute to the ongoing improvement in the quality of
medical care delivered to patients throughout the UK.
Revalidation will also serve as a process for identifying GPs,
as far as is practicable, for whom there are significant concerns
about their fitness to practise and to detect early signs of
deteriorating performance. The RCGP is working to ensure that GPs
will be supported at every stage during the revalidation cycle,
particularly if they are experiencing difficulties.
How will the revalidation process
work?
The RCGP will be responsible for recommending the standards for
revalidation for all UK general practitioners on the General
Practitioner Register, whatever their working circumstances. These
standards will need to be approved by the GMC before they are
introduced.
The process will involve the collection and submission of
supporting information to your local Responsible Officer. For
general practitioners the supporting information should demonstrate
that you are meeting the RCGP requirements, as agreed by the GMC,
and would normally be collected over a five year cycle.
Revalidation will be based on supporting information that most
doctors are familiar with as part of general working patterns -
such as annual appraisals and audits. Collection of supporting
information will be reviewed annually at appraisal and submitted to
the local Responsible Officer as a portfolio of supporting
information which will form the basis of the recommendation for
revalidation.
To revalidate a doctor, the GMC will require assurance that he
or she is meeting the required standards and that there are no
known concerns about the doctor's practice. In most cases, this
revalidation recommendation will come to the GMC from the local
Responsible Officer. In most cases the Responsible Officer will be
a senior, licensed doctor in the healthcare organisation where the
doctor works. For GPs, the Responsible Officer is likely to be in
the primary care organisation on whose performers list they are
included.
The Responsible Officer will make a recommendation to the GMC
about a doctor's revalidation, normally every five years. This will
be based on the doctor's appraisals over this period and supporting
information from those appraisals, together with information
derived from local clinical governance processes. Although the
Responsible Officer will make the recommendation, it will be for
the GMC to decide whether the doctor concerned should be
revalidated.
More detailed information on our proposals and plans about how
revalidation might work in practice is available in the latest
version of the RCGP Guide to Revalidation for General
Practitioners. The GMC website
(http://www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/licensing.asp) also contains useful
information.
What should I do now?
GPs should ensure that they have their annual
appraisals, and use an electronic toolkit to record their
supporting information, including their Personal Development Plans
(PDPs). They should consider recording their Significant Event
Audits or Clinical Audits, as well as conducting patient and
colleague surveys. They should deal with any complaints properly,
recording their reflections. GPs should record all their education,
including the hours spent and impact, using the RCGP’s credit
system.
What is a Responsible
Officer?
This is a new role created under the provisions of the Health
and Social Care Act 2008. A Responsible Officer will be a senior
doctor in a healthcare organisation, such as the medical director.
For a GP, the Responsible Officer is likely to be from the Primary
Care Organisation on whose performers list they are included. Every
licensed GP will be linked with one, and one only, named
Responsible Officer.
Responsible Officers, and only Responsible Officers, will make
recommendations to the GMC about doctors who should be revalidated
and the GMC will confirm that those doctors are relicensed.
What if I don’t have a Responsible
Officer?
The GMC is aware that a small number of UK-licenced doctors
don’t currently have a connection to a Responsible Officer. Work is
underway to address this issue and the GMC plan to write to all
UK-licenced doctors next year to identify those who do not have a
Responsible Officer.
What will be done to ensure processes
and procedures are in place to reflect the fact that GPs have
diverse roles that don’t always match a standard
template?
Revalidation must be proportionate and
achievable for all GPs, regardless of their working pattern. The
RCGP has co-ordinated a number of pilots to determine how feasible
it would be for certain groups of GPs, such as peripatetic locums,
remote rural GPs and those who work in secure environments and the
Defence Medical Services (DMS), to collect specific areas of
supporting information. The pilots have identified a range of
alternative approaches and these have been incorporated into the
RCGP’s Guide to Revalidation for General Practitioners (please see
the section on Supporting information required for the revalidation
of GPs in special groups).
What if there is a problem in me
achieving revalidation?
It is anticipated that the vast majority of
GPs will meet the standards required for revalidation. Some may do
so after local support and remediation. For those GPs who do not
meet the standards of revalidation, we understand that the GMC will
assess them through its fitness to practise processes before their
licence is put at risk. Support for GPs will be available
throughout the revalidation cycle.
Who is going to pay for
revalidation?
Professional responsibility for preparing for
appraisal and keeping up-to-date will remain with individual
doctors. However, revalidation will be largely built on existing or
enhanced local systems of appraisal and clinical governance, so it
is anticipated that associated costs will be linked to the
enhancement of these existing, local systems. It is recognised that
extra funding to support remediation will be required. The
Department of Health (England) is currently considering
options.
Will there be any changes to appraisal
with the introduction of revalidation?
A strengthened form of appraisal will underpin
revalidation and form a key part of the supporting information that
GPs will provide to ensure that a positive recommendation for
revalidation can be made by their Responsible Officer. This
strengthened form of appraisal has been developed to ensure that
doctors’ practice can be objectively and fairly assessed against
clear standards, whilst also allowing them to further develop their
skills and experience through life-long learning with the ultimate
aim of improving patient care.
Why can’t practising GPs be registered
as a patient within their own practice?
The RCGP
Guide to the Revalidation of General Practitioners states
that GPs will be required to sign a standard statement on probity,
health and use of health care confirming that ‘…the GP is in a
position to receive independent, impartial healthcare advice (for
example is not consulting a family member) and that he or she
accesses that health care appropriately. Unless there is a good
reason (such as working on a military base in the Defence Medical
Services, or geography) it is best practice for a GP to be
registered in a practice in which he or she does not work (or, in
the case of a locum, rarely works)’... The GMC in its Good Medical
Practice says that doctors should be able to access ‘independent
and objective medical care’ and the College fully supports this
best practice measure.
What involvement will patients
have?
The revalidation portfolio will, in
time, contain the results of a patient survey. Once revalidation is
fully established, the RCGP proposes that the portfolio should
include the results of one patient survey, with the inclusion of a
second if the first highlights any issues.
The GMC has provided guidance on the principles and
criteria for all survey tools for use in revalidation. The RCGP has
reviewed available questionnaires and recommended those that are
appropriate for use in revalidation in general practice
(the
recommended tools can be found here). Patient surveys will need
to seek the views of the patients actually consulting the
GP – practice-based surveys of the registered population will not
be acceptable.
Where can I find more
information?
The
RCGP Guide to the Revalidation of General Practitioners is
still evolving and will be regularly updated.
The revalidation section of the RCGP
website is also updated regularly and it is recommended GPs check
this site to stay up-to-date with developments on revalidation for
GPs. The GMC’s website is also a very useful source of information
on revalidation http://www.gmc-uk.org/guidance/good_medical_practice.asp
To provide feedback on any
aspect of Revalidation please click here.