Revalidation

What is Revalidation?

Every GMC registered doctor is required to have their Licence to Practise revalidated every 5 years.  This has the benefits of:

• Assuring patients and the public, employers and other healthcare professionals that licensed doctors are up-to-date and fit to practise.
• Supporting the doctor in maintaining and improving their practise.

Every doctor has to be connected to a designated body for revalidation purposes and has a Responsible Officer who makes a recommendation (to revalidate or defer) to the GMC by the due date.

Revalidation for Resident Doctors

Revalidation applies to all resident doctors from Foundation Year 2 onwards.

We expect the vast majority of resident doctors to revalidate without any problems, as they are already closely supervised. The process for Revalidation for resident doctors is aimed at ensuring that employers and educational and clinical supervisors have a process to share information when needed, so that resident doctors can be best supported in their revalidation process.

The GMC has agreed that the ARCP process will be used as the vehicle by which doctors in training will revalidate and there is some new and amended paperwork to ensure all the areas required for revalidation are covered in ARCP.

Providing you are engaging with the ARCP/appraisal process and keeping your e-portfolio up to date there is nothing additional that you need to do.

Resident doctors will revalidate at CCT, and some may also be revalidated part way through their training depending on the date that they have been given by the GMC. Please note that while CCT and revalidation are connected they are separate processes.

Designated body

This is the organisation that supports you through the revalidation process.  If you are a doctor in training with NHS England in the North West then NHSE Education North West is your designated body.

Responsible Officer

If you are a doctor in training with NHSE Education NW your Responsible Officer will be Roisin Haslett.

Resident doctor responsibilities

Resident doctors are responsible for ensuring that they are connected to the correct designated body for the purposes of revalidation.

Providing you hold a Mersey (MER) or North West (NWN) or North West England (NWE) training number you should ensure that you remain connected to NHSE Education NW as your designated body, and your Responsible Officer is Roisin Haslett.

Please note that if you are on an Out of Programme (OOP) placement within another region of the UK, or in another country, and still retain your training number, your designated body remains NHSE Education NW and your RO is Roisin Haslett.

You can do this by logging onto your GMC online account where you can check and amend your designated body and responsible officer details.

Revalidation paperwork

The documentation can be broadly grouped under the following headings:

1. Information from Lead Employers/Host Trusts – resident doctors’ employers and the trusts which host them (as they rotate through the training programmes) will provide information about whether each doctor has been involved in any conduct, capability or formal serious untoward incidents/significant event investigations, or named in any complaints that could affect a doctor's fitness to practise and whether these have been resolved satisfactorily.  Information relating to formal serious untoward incidents/significant event investigations, conduct, capability or complaints should be submitted by the trust on a live basis via an exception report to england.exception.nw@nhs.net Please note that if there are any urgent or level 3 concerns (as per the Deans Case Management Guidance) please do not hesitate to contact the Associate Dean, Postgraduate Dean or the Professional Support & Wellbeing team directly for advice.
   Incident reporting flow chart within a Trust
2. Information from Clinical/Educational Supervisor’s Reports – There are some new questions relating specifically to revalidation which the Royal Colleges have added to the templates in the portfolios. These should enable an educational supervisor to state they have not identified concerns that affect a resident doctor's fitness to practise or to share concerns if required.
3. Information from the Resident Doctor – resident doctors will have to complete a Form R.  This includes a self-declaration on scope of practice, significant events, complaints, compliments, probity and health. All resident doctors will have to provide this completed form prior to their ARCP each year.
   
   Your Form R should be submitted via TIS self-service (TSS) therefore you will need to set up an account in TSS.

TSS Sign up process

1. Navigate to https://trainee.tis.nhs.uk/
2. Sign up using the email address you have previously notified to NHS England

The following guidance provides additional information TIS self-service guide.

All the above information will then feed into the ARCP panel and the panel will make a recommendation to the Responsible Officer of ‘there are no known current unresolved causes of concern’ OR ‘there are current known unresolved causes of concern’.

Key staff and contact details

Roisin Haslett
Postgraduate Dean and Responsible Officer for all junior doctors in training for NHS England working across the North West

Janet Brown
Business Programme Manager 

Angela McMahon
Programme Support Manager 

Nichola Attwood, Bilkis Mulla and Katy Jones
Programme Officers (Revalidation)

All queries relating to revalidation should be emailed to england.revalidation.nw@nhs.net

You should state:

• Your full name
• GMC number
• Specialty

Useful links

The GMC website has a comprehensive section on the revalidation of doctors in training:
http://www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/revalidation/12383.asp

The GMC has a useful tool to enable you to establish your designated body and Responsible Officer:
http://www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/revalidation/designated_body_tool.asp