It’s been delayed for so long that you could be forgiven for losing interest, but another major change to our working lives is heading towards us.
Following the issue of licences to practise in November, the second-phase pilots for revalidation in England (which, it would be fair to say, is more or less behind the other nations) are due to start shortly.
A huge amount remains unclear. One area we’ve called for the pilots to address concerns responsible officers (ROs) - to whom and for what precisely will they be responsible? The role is likely to fall to medical directors, which immediately presents obvious potential for conflicts of interest. Is their main duty to support you in navigating the process, is it to the GMC, or is it - given that all ROs are likely to have a position on the board of their trust - to senior management? Would it be as easy to raise a contentious issue with your medical director if he or she had a role in your revalidation?
There is clearly much room for improvement on the way the process is being communicated. Doctors remain largely in the dark not just on the amount of their time, energy, and money that will be taken up by revalidation but also on the standards that will be expected of them. To me this arises from a basic confusion about the purpose of the exercise.
Is it to ensure doctors meet a basic minimum requirement, or is it to promote excellence? Much of the recent literature from the Revalidation Support Team defines standards which are aspirationally high. But, logically, the majority of doctors are not the very best, so there also needs to be a narrative for those who are a bare pass.
Our message to consultants is to be prepared. If you haven’t yet, and if you can find the time, start thinking about ‘evidence’ of your adherence to standards as early as possible. To the colleges, it is to be realistic in the standards expected. To trusts, it is to acknowledge that significant time will be required to complete the process - another reason not to cut consultants’ SPAs. And to the Department of Health, it’s to be clearer on what exactly is being asked of us.
The juggernaut is in motion but we need to know exactly where it’s heading.
Tags: Revalidation
It is difficult to know how to ‘prepare’ though. I suppose we just keep plugging away with CPD/appraisal. I notice though that the GMC doesn’t even have a clear idea of how CPD feeds into revalidation and a review is calling for it to create some guidance on the matter. We pay the GMC a lot of money - isn’t it time it got on with it?!