Regulating doctors, ensuring good medical practice

Positive recommendations

This page is in Section 3: The recommendation statements - part of the GMC's guidance for responsible officers on making revalidation recommendations.

What is a positive recommendation?

A positive recommendation is a formal declaration from you, a responsible officer (RO), that a licensed doctor is up to date and fit to practise.

Making a positive recommendation confirms that you are able to make a positive judgement about the continuation of a doctor’s licence to practise because they:

 

  • have met the GMC’s requirements for revalidation
  • have participated in systems and processes to support revalidation
  • have collected the required supporting information for revalidation.

 

A positive recommendation also confirms that, in your judgement, there are no unaddressed concerns about the doctor’s fitness to practise.

Unaddressed concerns do not include GMC conditions and undertakings that are active on a doctor’s registration. Rather, unaddressed concerns are concerns that you are aware of, but that have not been referred to the GMC or addressed by the relevant body.

What the positive recommendation statements ask you to confirm

The positive recommendation statements (pdf) ask you, as an RO, to confirm that a doctor remains up to date and fit to practise, and that their licence to practise should be continued.

The statements focus on:

  • a doctor’s participation in appraisal or assessment
  • a doctor’s collection of supporting information
  • any other information used to inform your recommendation
  • a doctor’s compliance with any GMC conditions or undertakings
  • a doctor’s compliance with locally agreed conditions on their practice
  • any unaddressed concerns about a doctor’s fitness to practise.

The positive recommendation statements

The recommendation statements (pdf) describe what you, as an RO, must agree to when you submit a recommendation. There is one set of recommendation statements for each of the three recommendation categories.

When you submit a positive recommendation to the GMC, you must agree with all of the positive recommendation statements.