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 Local Education and Training Board (known as for example, Health Education East Midlands). Your responsible officer is the responsible officer for your LETB.
  • If you are a trainee and your programme is managed by the Defence Postgraduate Medical Deanery or the Pharmaceutical Medicine Deanery, your designated body is that deanery and your responsible officer is your postgraduate dean).
  • 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.

You can check the name of your designated body and responsible officer by visiting the 'My Revalidation' section of your GMC Online account.

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 responsible officer, will base their recommendation about you 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.

Setting the date of your first revalidation

We worked with responsible officers to set the first date of revalidation for all doctors in a training programme when revalidation started on 3 December 2012.

Download our leaflet Information for doctors in training (pdf), for more information about how we did this.

For many trainees we used their expected CCT date to determine the date of their first revalidation. We set these dates 60 days after the expected CCT date because we know CCT dates can move.

This may not be the case when setting revalidation dates for trainees in the future, but we will work with responsible officers for trainees to set revalidation dates in close alignment with expected CCT dates.

We will send you a formal revalidation notice. You will receive this four months before your recommendation is due from your responsible officer. Your responsible officer can make their recommendation to the GMC at any time during the four month formal notice period. This means you do not need to have received your CCT in order to revalidate.

If you have any concerns about your revalidation date, for example if you think you will achieve your CCT more than four months in advance of this date, you should contact your responsible officer to discuss this.

After you complete your training

When you complete your training, 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.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Read our frequently asked questions if you have further questions about revalidation.

Useful links

Your postgraduate medical education organisation's website can provide you with more information about how revalidation will work for you.

Contact us

Please get in touch with us if you have a question about revalidation.