Two weeks left to respond to revalidation consultation

Doctors, employers and patients who want to help shape the process of revalidation have two weeks left to respond to the General Medical Council’s consultation.

The consultation, Revalidation: the way ahead, began on Monday 1 March 2010 and closes on Friday 4 June 2010. Revalidation is about providing further assurance that the 218,000 doctors with a licence to practise medicine in the UK are up to date and fit to practise. The proposals set out a system which is designed to be flexible and relevant to doctors' day-to-day practice and builds on systems that already exist, or should exist, to support high quality care.

The response to the consultation so far has been very encouraging. Copies of the consultation have been sent to several thousand organisations and more than 9,500 people have visited the consultation website leading to over 800 downloads of the consultation document. We have also had more than 550 downloads of the podcast from our website and more than 1000 downloads of the revalidation toolkit.

The GMC has spoken at more than 60 engagement events across the UK to encourage people to respond, and met over 4000 people, including doctors and medical managers. There have also been some specific events for locum agencies, the independent sector and for patients and there are further events planned for the last two weeks of the consultation period.

To date, there have been over 400 written responses to the consultation, with most responses so far coming from individual doctors in a range of grades and roles. The GMC has also received responses from employers and organisations representing doctors and patients and is expecting a significant number of further responses towards the end of the consultation period.

The GMC will begin formally analysing the responses as soon as the consultation closes, and a full response to the consultation will be published later this year.

Niall Dickson, Chief Executive of the GMC, said: “We have been very encouraged by the responses to the consultation so far, which will help us further develop revalidation to make sure it works well for doctors, employers and patients. The consultation is just part of the process - the GMC will continue to listen to and work with all those affected by revalidation and to refine and improve the system as we learn more from the ongoing pilots and projects.”  

To download a copy of the consultation document and for more information about revalidation visit www.gmc-uk.org/thewayahead.