Regulating doctors, ensuring good medical practice

The revalidation recommendation process

This page is in Section 1: Introduction - part of the GMC's guide for responsible officers on making revalidation recommendations.

Recommendations in the revalidation cycle

Revalidation recommendations can be made once the GMC has served notice on a doctor, informing them that a recommendation about their revalidation is due.

Your recommendation must be one of the following three categories:

  • a positive recommendation that the doctor is up to date and fit to practise
  • a request to defer the date of your recommendation
  • a notification of the doctor’s non-engagement in revalidation.

As an RO you submit your recommendation after you have considered the information that is available to you about the doctor’s revalidation. This information will have been generated by the doctor’s regular participation in the local systems and processes that support revalidation, including:

  • the outputs of ongoing local processes that support revalidation, including annual appraisal
  • the supporting information required for revalidation that is collected by doctors throughout a revalidation cycle
  • other relevant information generated by local systems (for example, early identification and, where possible, resolution of concerns about doctors’ fitness to practise).

In making a recommendation about a doctor’s revalidation you are not benchmarking a doctor’s engagement in revalidation against that of their peers. You are confirming that an individual doctor has met the minimum requirements for their revalidation as set out by the GMC.

After your recommendation has been submitted, the GMC will make a decision about the doctor’s revalidation based on your recommendation.

You cannot withdraw your recommendation once it has been submitted to the GMC. If you are concerned about a submitted recommendation you should contact the GMC as soon as you have identified an issue.

Where the GMC makes a positive decision about a doctor’s revalidation, the doctor’s next revalidation cycle begins. The GMC then confirms when the doctor is next due to revalidate.

The steps to making a revalidation recommendation

As your recommendation is a formal submission to the GMC about a doctor’s revalidation:

  • you must exercise your professional judgement when considering your recommendations
  • your recommendations should be made in good faith, based on the information that is available to you.

The revalidation process formally begins when the GMC issues notice to the doctor, stating that a recommendation about their revalidation is due. GMC Connect will allow you to filter doctors according to their submission date.

To prepare your recommendation you must take account of the information that is available to you about a doctor’s revalidation, generated by the local systems and processes that support revalidation.

Section 2 describes the information that you should assess when you consider the recommendations that you make about doctors.

After considering the available information, you must decide which of the three categories of recommendation you will make:

  • Section 3 describes the categories of recommendation that you can make
  • Section 4 provides criteria for the three recommendation categories.

The submission of your recommendation is not the only time at which you can discuss a doctor’s revalidation with the GMC.

You can discuss a doctor’s revalidation at any point with the GMC’s Employer Liaison Service (ELS) or the GMC Revalidation Team.

In particular, you may wish to contact the GMC to discuss deferring your recommendation, or notifying the GMC of a doctor’s non-engagement in revalidation. Notifications of non-engagement can be submitted to the GMC at any point, provided that they meet the criteria in Section 4. 

GMC decisions about doctors’ revalidation

Decisions about doctors’ revalidation can only be made by the GMC.

In making a decision about a doctor’s revalidation, the GMC considers the RO's recommendation and any other relevant information, including:

  • previous deferral requests which you or another RO have made about the doctor in question
  • previous notifications of non-engagement which you or another RO have submitted about the doctor in question
  • whether the doctor is currently in a GMC process such as fitness to practise
  • any other information relating to the doctor’s registration with the GMC such as current applications for erasure from the medical register.