RCPCH approach

The College is designing and implementing a system to support specialist revalidation that will command the confidence of the public, the GMC and the doctors who participate.    Use the links to move to the relevant section.

• Setting specialty requirements
• FAQs
• RCPCH advice and guidance for paediatricians
• Academy guidance for appraisers re: CPD
• Academy funded revalidation projects
• Department of Health/Revalidation Support Team (RST) pilots
• Academy working groups involvement
• Consultations with members
• Revalidation Development Committee

Setting specialty requirements for revalidation

The Revalidation Development Committee (RDC), specialty advisory committees and specialty forum have developed paediatric specialty supporting information for revalidation in line with GMC and Academy of Medical Royal Colleges expectations.

Doctors must collect supporting information for revalidation. Refer to the College's final supporting information guidance (PDF, 171KB, 19 pages) .

You may also find the College's revalidation overview (PDF, 18 pages, 3.9 MB) useful.   useful     

Appraisers will assess doctors' supporting information at annual appraisals.

FAQs

You may  find the following FAQs useful to refer to:

General GMC FAQs

Trainee FAQs   (PDF, 5 pages, 50 KB) - please also refer to the GMC Trainee doctors revalidation section

Academy of Medical Royal Colleges FAQs

RCPCH advice and guidance for paediatricians

Paediatricians and those responsible for the revalidation of paediatricians are recommended to seek advice on revalidation from RCPCH websites and revalidation staff in addition to guidance from GMC and other related organisations. The advice and guidance issued by the RCPCH should be interpreted in the context of local appraisal processes and supplemented by GMC advice and guidance. The responsibility for revalidation recommendations lies solely with the Responsible Officer  and final decisions with the GMC.

To manage the range of queries and to ensure consistency of responses across paediatrics, queries from paediatricians, appraisees, appraisers, Responsible Officers and others to the RCPCH should be submitted by email to the revalidation team. If necessary, the query will then be directed to the revalidation specialty advisers at the College for additional input. All advisers have undergone Academy and RCPCH training. Only revalidation specialty advisers are trained to provide revalidation guidance and information to paediatricians .

 The RCPCH gives revalidation advice on specialty specific matters in response to a specific request. The RCPCH prepares or gives such advice in principle, based on the facts presented to them, with reasonable care and in good faith, and does not accept any liability arising from the advice. The advice will not be binding. The RCPCH undertakes to keep information supplied confidential unless otherwise required by law, court order or any governmental or regulatory authority, for reasons of patient safety.  For the avoidance of doubt, the RCPCH reserves the right to disclose such information (in confidence) to the General Medical Council or other relevant regulatory authority where (acting reasonably) it considers it in the public interest to do so (individuals will only be identified if it is required for patient safety reasons).

• All enquiries are handled in confidence by the RCPCH revalidation team.
• Should an enquiry be forwarded on to a revalidation specialty adviser, the personal information contained within that information will be redacted before it is sent on.  This includes, name, contact details, location, employer, age, gender, religion, ethnic origin etc. 
• The adviser will return their response to the revalidation team securely so that a member of staff can send a final response to the person making the enquiry. 

Academy guidance for appraisers re: CPD

This document, prepared by the Academy’s Directors of CPD Committee, of which RCPCH is a member, is intended to provide guidance to appraisers on what they should be considering when reviewing a doctor’s Continuing Professional Development (CPD) activity, and guidance to doctors on the things that they should expect to be discussed during an effective appraisal meeting. It will help doctors and their appraisers to structure the supporting information and the appraisal discussion in a way that allows a proper evaluation of a doctor’s learning since the previous appraisal, and supports the development of the subsequent personal development plan (PDP).

Academy funded revalidation projects

The College has received external funding for some aspects of revalidation. Current Academy-funded work includes:

• Development of an online e-system for revalidation (project began Jan 2010)
• Review, modification and piloting of the Paediatric Carers of Children Feedback (PaedCCF) tool (project completed July 2011)
• Review and upgrade of online CPD for use in revalidation (project completed May 2010)
• Member consultation (see below)

Department of Health/Revalidation Support Team (RST) revalidation pilots

The College was involved in an England-wide pilot of revalidation processes, coordinated by the RST, to review appropriateness of strengthened medical appraisal and revalidation standards. The pilots tested:

• Strengthened appraisal training for revalidation;
• Collection of supporting information against GMC and specialty standards for revalidation;
• Assessment at strengthened appraisals of supporting information against GMC and specialty revalidation standards;
• Use of strengthened appraisal forms to record outcomes of appraisals;
• Use of an online revalidation pilots appraisal toolkit for collection of supporting information and completed appraisal forms;
• Ability of a Responsible Officer to make a decision to recommend a doctor for revalidation (or not) based on information resulting from appraisals.

A range of specialties and sectors with different working patterns were involved in the pilots.

Individual Colleges/Faculties acted as observers on pilot project boards, feeding back key issues and challenges to the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC).

Academy revalidation working groups involvement

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and the GMC are leading on the development of revalidation. Several interlocking groups work on this and the College has a member representative on most groups who acts as liaison between the RDC and their working group. Working groups have covered, or continue to cover:

• Appraisal and advisor guidance
• Continuing Professional Development
• Clinical audit requirements
• Medical note keeping and revalidation
• Multisource feedback (peer and patient)
• Non clinical work standards
• Quality assurance of revalidation
• Remediation
• Return to work
• Revalidation online portfolio
• Specialty guidance frameworks

Consultations with members

Work to consult with members on revalidation includes:

• Revised supporting information for paedatrics - carried out in July & August 2011

• E-survey of College members -October 2008  See summary of responses to member survey.doc (6 pages, 61 KB)

• Focus group with College members - carried out 22 July 2009 at RCPCH London. Go to focus group 2009 report summary.doc (7 pages, 67 KB).

Revalidation Development Committee

The Revalidation Development Committee (RDC) membership comprises College Officers, Chair of Clinical Standards Committee and College Directors. The Committee is chaired by Dr Alistair Thomson, Vice President (Education) and Revalidation lead. Go to Revalidation Development Committee terms of reference.doc (2 pages, 36 KB).

The Committee oversees all areas of work around revalidation and ensures the College fulfils its aims and objectives in this area:

• Encourage all Members and Fellows continually to improve their practice.
• Allow those who are working at acceptable levels to recertify without undue difficulty or stress.
• Command the confidence of patients, the public and the profession.
• Be affordable and flexible, starting simple to allow further development.
• Use existing tools, College standards and processes where appropriate.
• Equitable across the specialty, independent of differing areas of practice, working environments and geographical location within and outside the UK.
• Designed to allow early warning of potential failure so remedial action can be taken.
• Identify those whose practice falls below acceptable levels and give advice and monitoring to allow revalidation to be reconsidered.

Members of the committee act as RCPCH specialty advisers for revalidation.