Revalidation: what you need to know

From December, every doctor who is fully registered with a licence to practise will be subject to regular checks to help improve the quality of patient care. The UK will be the first country in the world to introduce such a comprehensive system, covering all 230,000 licensed doctors.

The Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt MP, announced the new system on 19 October, marking the biggest change in how we regulate doctors for more than 150 years. He said: ‘Doctors save lives every day and making sure they are up to speed with the latest treatments and technologies will help them save even more. This is why a proper system of revalidation is so important.’

What is revalidation?

Revalidation is the process by which doctors will regularly demonstrate to us that they are keeping up to date and they are fit to practise, normally every five years. This will be based on the outcome of annual appraisals and information collected about each doctor’s practice, including feedback from patients, doctors, nurses and other colleagues.

How will revalidation affect me?

Only doctors who are fully registered with a licence to practise will have to revalidate. This means that you won’t need to revalidate while you are training to be a doctor at medical school or while you are provisionally registered during the first year of the Foundation Programme. We will send you a revalidation date when you become fully registered. Your first revalidation will be five years after this point.

Find out more about how revalidation works on our website.