Regulating doctors, ensuring good medical practice

Information for doctors in training

This page is for trainee doctors and provides information about their revalidation.

Revalidation started on 3 December 2012. We will now begin to revalidate licensed doctors, starting first with medical leaders and responsible officers.

Every doctor who is fully registered with a licence to practise needs to revalidate. This includes doctors in foundation year two and specialty training.

How you will revalidate

As a doctor in foundation or specialty training, you will revalidate in a similar way to other licensed doctors. Your ‘responsible officer’ will make a recommendation to us that you are up to date, fit to practise and should be revalidated.

Download our leaflet Information for doctors in training (pdf), for more information about how you will revalidate.

Your designated body

Your responsible officer will be in the organisation that is supporting you with revalidation. This organisation is called your ‘designated body’:

If you are a trainee in England, your designated body is your postgraduate deanery. Your responsible officer is your postgraduate dean. (Your designated body will change when postgraduate deaneries are replaced by local education and training boards in April 2013).
If you are a trainee in Scotland, your designated body is NHS Education for Scotland. Your responsible officer is the medical director for NHS Education for Scotland.
If you are a trainee in Wales, your designated body is the Wales Deanery. Your responsible officer is your postgraduate dean.
If you are a trainee in Northern Ireland, your designated body is the Northern Ireland Medical and Dental Training Agency (NIMDTA). Your responsible officer is your postgraduate dean.

We want to know every licensed doctor’s designated body before revalidation begins in December 2012. We have used your response to the 2012 national training survey to confirm your designated body for you.

Supporting information

Licensed doctors will need to collect supporting information to show how they are meeting our professional standards in their daily practice.

As a doctor in training, you will be generating this information to meet the requirements of your curriculum and training programme. Where your training programme does not require you to routinely collect items of supporting information, you are not expected to go beyond the requirements of your training programme to collect this.

Recommending you for revalidation

Your postgraduate dean, acting as your responsible officer, will base their recommendation on your participation in the Annual Review of Competence Progression (ARCP) process or its equivalent the Record of In-Training Assessment (RITA).

When you will revalidate

The point at which you revalidate as a doctor in training will depend on how long your training lasts:

If your training lasts less than five years, your first revalidation will be at the point of eligibility for CCT.
If your training lasts longer than five years, you will be revalidated five years after you gained full registration with a licence to practise, and again at the point of eligibility for CCT.

We believe responsible officers are better placed than we are to know when doctors will be ready to have a recommendation made about them for revalidation. We are working with the responsible officers for deaneries to agree the dates that doctors in training will revalidate, and they will be providing us with information to allow us to set revalidation submission dates.

Further information on the criteria being used to schedule the first revalidation dates for doctors in training will be available soon.

After you complete your training

When you complete your training, your postgraduate deanery will no longer be your designated body. Your designated body will change to the organisation in which you spend most or all of your practice. You will need to tell us when your designated body changes by using GMC Online.

After this, you will need to have a regular appraisal that is based on our core guidance for the profession, Good Medical Practice, and collect supporting information to show how you are meeting our professional standards.

Click to read more information about how licensed doctors will revalidate.