CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The Information Areas Professional roles
The Supporting Information Personal details
Description of practice including any ex- tended roles
Any exceptional circumstances
Annual appraisals, including PDPs and their review
Statements of probity, health and health- care
Education: maintaining quality Quality of practice Feedback on practice
50 learning credits a year; 250 learning credits over five years
Clinical audit which completes the audit cycle
Ten significant event audits Patient survey Colleague Survey Review of all complaints
prisons. We have co-operated with pilots run by the revalidation support team in England.
Our view is that, while evolution after in- troduction is inevitable, the current pro- posals for revalidation meet our three main criteria – they are equitable, feasible and proportionate. All of our pilots suggest that doctors respond well to the challenge to provide structured standardised informa- tion for their appraisals and that apprais- ers find it easier to then engage in quality- enhancing discussions.
The next steps
We expect that the final decision to intro- duce revalidation will occur in the summer of 2012, with implementation from the end of that year. Revalidation will then be rolled out over the five years to the end of 2017. While delays are of course possible, it seems at present that everybody is becom- ing committed to this timetable.
batical or had a period of illness. This infor- mation will assist the responsible officer in interpreting the evidence provided.
All Colleges are asking for a minimum of 50 learning credits a year, with at least 250 over the five years. For all, one learning credit is one hour of learning. The RCGP defines credits as including online learn- ing,
reading journals, practice clinical
meetings, seminars, workshops and con- ferences. It also will encourage those GPs who can provide evidence of positive out- come from their learning to claim double credits. In this last respect, the RCGP is more forward-thinking than the other Col- leges because it wishes to promote educa- tion that is of benefit to patient care, rather than formulaic.
In general practice, discussion, reflection and improvement based on individual cases is called ‘significant event auditing’. These don’t have to be critical incidents in which patients risked or experienced harm; they just have to be events from which we can learn how to improve patient safety, care or experience. This is familiar territory for the vast majority of GPs.
GPs are used to undertaking patient sur- veys, but colleague surveys are a relatively recent innovation. About two-thirds of GPs have now done a colleague survey and their experiences are mostly positive.
Of the supporting evidence in the table, it
can be seen that all items should already be part of the working clinical lives of GPs except colleague surveys which are becom- ing familiar. The RCGP, like other Colleges, is asking its doctors to use the information that they should be collecting routinely to demonstrate that they continue to be fit to practise.
Collecting the information
GPs were early adopters of electronic port- folios for their appraisals. Revalidation re- quires further organisation of the informa- tion and this functionality is being intro- duced in several electronic products. The RCGP has recognised that it should play a leadership role in providing a portfolio for general practitioners and is developing its Revalidation ePortfolio (ReP).
The ReP allows a GP to collect any infor- mation they wish for their own purposes, to identify the sub-set that they wish to be discussed at their appraisal and then, with their appraiser, to identify the information to be put forward for revalidation. It is free to RCGP members and to primary care organisations, but a charge will be levied from 2012 for its use by non-members of the College.
Testing the system
The RCGP has run a series of pilots includ- ing with mainstream GPs, locums, defence services doctors and doctors working in
This timeline creates the greatest of chal- lenges for the NHS, and in particular the NHS in England. Getting clinical govern- ance systems, appraisals and the accom- panying responsible officer functionality to a sufficient level throughout the health service will not be easy, but the direction of travel is positive.
Pulling it all together
As can be seen, the RCGP has been offering a leadership role in revalidation as a con- cept and then a project. It has been charged with defining the threshold and the sup- porting evidence to demonstrate that the threshold has been met – this it has done. It has consulted widely and listened to the views of doctors and patients, as well as considering the outcome of pilots.
The RCGP supports the current proposals for revalidation which it regards as fit for purpose and looks forward to their intro- duction at the end of next year.
It will continue to support individual doc- tors to improve their practice and to iden- tify poor performance.
Most of all, it will ensure that all patients, regardless of which practice they join, receive the safe high-quality care they deserve.
Visit
www.rcgp.org.uk/revalidation.aspx Prof Mike Pringle
FOR MORE INFORMATION national health executive May/Jun 11 | 49
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