My revalidation

We will revalidate you, usually every five years, based on a recommendation that we receive from the responsible officer in the organisation that is supporting you with your appraisal and revalidation. This organisation is called your ‘designated body’.

Your responsible officer is a licensed doctor who is usually the medical director or their deputy of that organisation.

Your responsible officer will base their recommendation about you on your appraisals over the revalidation cycle and other information drawn from the clinical governance systems of their organisations.

After we have received your revalidation recommendation from your responsible officer, we will decide whether to accept it and continue (revalidate) your licence. We expect to receive positive recommendations about the vast majority of doctors.

How responsible officers will make their recommendations

When your revalidation recommendation is due, your responsible officer can make one of three recommendations about you. They can:

• make a positive recommendation that you are up to date, fit to practise and should be revalidated (we expect this will be the case for the vast majority of doctors)
• request a deferral because they need more time or more information to make a recommendation about you. This might happen if you take an extended break from your practice. Your licence to practise is unaffected by deferral.
• or notify us that you have failed to engage with appraisal or any other local systems or processes that support revalidation.

We have recently published guidance, Making revalidation recommendations: the GMC responsible officer protocol to help responsible officers make their recommendations about doctors. This includes clear criteria for making recommendations about doctors and we expect responsible officers to make them in a fair, consistent and objective way.

We have also published the statements that underpin the three types of recommendation that a responsible officer can make. Download our revalidation recommendation statements (pdf).

Your first revalidation

Your first revalidation will be sometime between April 2013 and March 2016.

In December 2012, we will start to tell doctors the date that we want to receive their first revalidation recommendation from their responsible officer. Every licensed doctor should receive their date by the end of January 2013. We will also send you a formal revalidation notice. You will receive this four months before your recommendation is due from your responsible officer.

We have worked closely with your responsible officer to set the date they will submit their first recommendation about you. We have done this because we believe responsible officers are better placed than we are to know when you are likely to be ready for revalidation. They have used supplementary guidance that we have agreed with the four UK health departments to assess this.