Whether you have completed many GP appraisals before or are preparing for your first appraisal, following the process outlined here will help you succeed in your annual appraisal.
In this article, you will find:
A GP appraisal is an annual review where the GP presents their portfolio of work including CPD activity, personal development, achievements, challenges, and aspirations to a GP appraiser assigned by their designated body. The output will be a personal development plan for the next 12 months.
Your designated body for your GP appraisal will be the main organisation in which you are employed or contracted. Each designated body (DB) has its own responsible office (RO). Your RO will be the person who makes a revalidation recommendation about you to the GMC on behalf of your designated body. GP appraisals are factored into this recommendation and are therefore important to demonstrate that you continue to meet the principles and values of Good Medical Practice and are fit to practise.
Your GP appraisal requirements include the following in your portfolio:
Part 1: Inputs to appraisal
Part 2: Confidential appraisal discussion
Part 3: Outputs from appraisal
You’ll need to include your name, GMC number and contact details so that your GP appraiser can contact you. You will need to record your historic qualifications that show how you qualified for your scope of work, including updates where applicable and assurance you have adequate indemnity arrangements to cover your whole scope of work.
Your appraisal information needs to include the appraiser's name, appraiser's GMC number, contact details, appraisal date, details of the designated body, responsible officer, and revalidation date. This is so the GMC appraiser can determine where this appraisal falls in the revalidation cycle and provide context to the supporting information.
You should describe the full scope and nature of your work including all roles and positions where you have clinical responsibilities or require your UK licence to practice. Make sure you think about the full scope including voluntary work, public and private practice, leadership, managerial, academic, research, teaching, and training whether paid or unpaid.
Provide context to your GP appraiser about where this appraisal sits in the revalidation cycle. If you’ve already completed any ensure the appraiser has access and if you’ve missed any, make it clear why and when.
Provide a summary of the progress of your previous personal development plan or final ARCP. Most goals should be partially or fully achieved but if no progress has been made you should explain why and decide whether this goal should be dropped, amended, or carried forward.
Reflecting on the challenges and achievements you’ve faced over the last 12 months is important to document and it allows you to further the discussion in the verbal reflection during the appraisal. Aspirations are important to shape the goals in your next personal development plan.
Maintaining your health and wellbeing is essential to providing safe and effective patient care. You will need to make a declaration confirming your awareness of the professional obligations of medical professionals about personal health as outlined in Good Medical Practice. The appraisal will prompt you to think about how you maintain personal and professional wellbeing. You may wish to discuss this verbally instead.
Your supporting information should be used to provide sufficient information to illustrate your practice and facilitate a useful discussion during your appraisal. You must discuss and reflect on six key areas in your revalidation cycle. This means that throughout your appraisals they may be weighted more heavily towards one area in one appraisal and another in another appraisal but at the end of the revalidation cycle you will have a comprehensive portfolio supporting the whole scope and nature of your work.
These six areas are:
- Continuous professional development (CPD)
- Quality improvement activity (QIA)
- Significant events or serious incidents
- Feedback from patients
- Feedback from colleagues
- Compliments and complaints
Continuous professional development (CPD)
CPD learning should come from a variety of internal, external, and personal study activities. You need to keep up to date and fit to practice over your whole scope of work and demonstrate this over your five-year revalidation cycle. There are no requirements for a specific number of CPD credits per year, but the Royal College of General Practitioners can provide GP-specific guidance in their introduction to CPD.
Quality improvement activity (QIA)
The frequency of QIA needs to be relevant to the scope of work you do; the GMC expects you to participate in activity relevant to your practice at least once in the revalidation window. Some QIAs are brief, and some are significant, you should try and take part in any national outcomes or audits in your area of practice. An important part of QIA is to evaluate and reflect on the results of the activity and what you’ve done because of that.
Significant events or serious incidents
To review and improve your professional work you should declare and reflect on every unintended or unexpected event which could or did lead to the harm of a patient. Not all significant events need to be discussed in detail in your appraisal, but any reflections and actions agreed at the time of the incident should be included in your supporting evidence. The purpose of this is to identify any patterns in the significant events, consider further learning and development and prevent them from happening again.
Feedback from patients
Patient feedback helps you to identify your areas of strength and development. Your appraiser will prompt you to explain your choice of respondents and support you with how to select a range of patients throughout your scope of practice with no conflict of interest or bias. The GMC has an example questionnaire to obtain patient feedback but there are many other options available some of which may be better suited to General Practice.
Feedback from colleagues
Colleague feedback helps you to identify your areas of strength and development. Your colleagues should be chosen across the whole scope of your practice and probably won't all be doctors. If there are any elements of your practice where you might struggle to get colleague feedback such as teaching or training, discuss this with your appraiser.
Compliments and complaints
Complaints should be seen as another area of feedback and development. You should take time to reflect on how the complaint arose, your response and the action taken. Compliments should be reflected on but not provided to protect the anonymity of the sender.
You should review Good Medical Practice pre-appraisal and be prepared to make declarations about the professional obligations placed on doctors concerning personal health, probity, and confidentiality. You should also declare personal accountability for the accuracy of the supporting information within your appraisal portfolio.
The confidential appraisal discussion is an opportunity for the appraiser to support, encourage and challenge you constructively through reviewing supporting information and facilitating your verbal reflection. Through this conversation, you will identify the most relevant and useful items for your personal development plan and continuation in your professional journey. The purpose of the appraisal is for self-reflection and planning professional development. Your appraiser can signpost further resources and support in development, health, and wellbeing.
Your first output after the appraisal will be your personal development plan as agreed by you and the appraiser. Having a written list of objectives is an important output to support your personal and professional goals from your appraisal date until your next appraisal.
The appraiser will offer support to make sure your goals are achievable, clearly written and well thought out. You should have a clear understanding of how you might achieve these goals and what success looks like. Some goals may have a time frame of more than a year so you might break these down into sub-goals so you can make progress.
A downloadable version of the Personal Development Plan (PDP) template 2022 can be found on the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges website. Please note, that clicking this link will automatically download the Word document template from the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges to your device.
The appraiser should draft a summary to show you have remained competent in the four domains of Good Medical Practice and you will need to agree with this summary before your appraisal is complete. The summary should include all of the areas we have outlined above and show that you have engaged in the appraisal process.
Following the summary of the appraisal, the appraiser will need to agree to a series of five statements for the RO which will be used for revalidation.
You and your appraiser will review and confirm you agree with the outputs of the appraisal and sign it off so the appraisal can be confirmed and shared with your RO.
Your GP appraisal checklist includes everything you should have prepared in our portfolio before your confidential appraisal discussion:
- Name
- GMC number
- Historic qualifications
- Updated qualifications
- Indemnity arrangements
- Appraiser's name
- Appraiser's GMC number
- Appraisers contact details
- Appraisal date
- Designated body
- Responsible officer
- Revalidation date
- Scope and nature of work
- Previous appraisals in this revalidation cycle
- Review of previous personal development plan
- Challenges
- Achievements
- Aspirations
- Personal and professional wellbeing
- Continuous professional development (CPD)
- Quality improvement activity (QIA)
- Significant events or serious incidents
- Feedback from patients
- Feedback from colleagues
- Compliments and complaints
- Declarations on professional obligations
- Declaration on personal accountability
Below are further resources you can use when preparing for your GP appraisal:
Our Revalidation Services Support team is here to help and guide you through the appraisal and revalidation process to ensure you keep your GMC license. Find out more about your appraisal and revalidation with GP World.
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