February 22, 2022

One thing many newly-qualified GPs worry about is appraisals, but we’re here to help you through your career and lend support and guidance where you need it.

Every GP needs a General Medical Council (GMC) license to work in the UK. Revalidation of your right to practice happens every five years, following completion of annual appraisals, where all doctors have a professional responsibility to show that they remain up to date and fit to complete the work they undertake. Your license to practice depends on being recommended for revalidation, which in turn depends on satisfactory yearly appraisals. You cannot work as a GP without this.

As a newly-qualified GP, it is important to prepare for appraisals efficiently to avoid spending excessive amounts of precious time on them. When you partner with Key Medical Services, you gain access to ongoing support, guidance and advice designed to develop these skills and others that you need to comply with the professional standards set out by the GMC throughout your career. 

GP appraisals

As you will know, an appraisal is the process of facilitated self-review supported by information gathered from the full scope of your work. It is a designated time, once a year for you to get together with a trained colleague and review personal achievements, challenges, lessons learned, as well as your previous year’s personal development plan and objectives. The process can help you establish your long-term career ambitions and identify any training needs, whilst drawing up your self-development plans for the next year.

What will you need to complete your GMC annual appraisal?

At your appraisal it is important to provide a detailed description of the work you have performed as this enables the appraiser to understand the roles you complete along with the varying contexts. This includes a summary of the type of work undertaken and the length of each assignment.

Key Medical Services can help you with collecting some of the supporting information that you need to provide. The evidence consists of:

• Examples of continuing professional development e.g. attending courses, contribution to peer support groups, etc.
• Quality improvement activity
• Significant events
• Feedback from colleagues
• Feedback from patients
• Review of complaints and compliments

Key Medical Services is developing peer support networks to help GPs: keep up to date with guidance and new developments and share their CPD learning. These groups will promote case discussions which can be used as Quality improvement activities and help doctors to avoid professional isolation by having colleagues to call on for their Colleague feedback questionnaires.

We provide support if a significant event or complaint should occur, and our Chief Medical Officer can help with reflection on the lessons learnt from these occurrences. We are developing processes for routinely collecting feedback from clients to provide you with evidence of good performance.

Tips for newly-qualified doctors:

It is important to continually gather evidence when working so that you are prepared for your yearly appraisals well in advance.

It’s a good idea to keep a CPD (continuous professional development) log so that you document all your learning as you complete it, and to write a quick reflection at the time on how your experience will improve your practice. You will then have it ready to present with ease when it comes to your appraisal, rather than having to go back and remember the training you have completed throughout the year!

If you are considering becoming a GP and are looking for advice on how to source assignments, our team of specialist consultants would be happy to guide you in this time. They can help you get your compliance levels up to 100% and help source the best opportunities that suit your career goals.