The GMC has issued Good Medical Practice: a Framework for Appraisal and Revalidation (GMC, 2012a) and Supporting Information for Appraisal and Revalidation (GMC, 2012b) as well as Continuing Professional Development: Guidance for all doctors (GMC, 2012c). These key documents outline the broad areas that need to be covered in a medical appraisal for revalidation and describe six types of supporting information required by the GMC for a positive revalidation recommendation:
- Continuing professional development (CPD)
- Quality improvement activities (QIA)
- Significant events (SE)
- Feedback from colleagues
- Feedback from patients
- Review of complaints and compliments.
The GMC requirements are necessarily broad enough to fit every doctor, no matter what area, sector or scope of work.
Additional generic guidance has been developed by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC), including Supporting Information for Appraisal and Revalidation: Core Guidance Framework (AoMRC, 2013) and Appraisal for Revalidation: A Guide to the Process (AoMRC, 2014).
Generic GMC requirements and AoMRC guidance have been interpreted by the RCGP, in a specialty-specific context, for all GPs, irrespective of their scope of work, in this document. This arises from the need to remove inconsistencies in the interpretation of earlier guidance and to keep proportionate the amount of documentation required to successfully revalidate. Each section is structured to highlight the GMC requirement (in red), followed by the AoMRC guidance (in blue) and finally the RCGP specialty specific recommendation(s) (in black). It provides additional detail for GPs on providing the specific supporting information required in each of the six GMC categories, scope of work and reflection on probity and health.
GPs should also understand the process of annual medical appraisal for revalidation as defined for GPs in England in the Revalidation Support Team’s Medical Appraisal Guide, for GPs in Scotland in NHS Scotland’s A Guide to Appraisal for Medical Revalidation, for GPs in Wales in the Wales Deanery’s All Wales Medical Appraisal Policy and for GPs in Northern Ireland in documentation provided by the Northern Ireland Medical and Dental Training Agency.