Revalidation: multi-source feedback
Doctors have asked us a lot of questions about collecting feedback from colleagues and patients in the past few weeks. Read our FAQs to help address some common misunderstandings.
What do you mean by colleagues?
- Colleagues don’t just mean fellow doctors.
- Medical colleagues may include doctors in the same specialty, colleagues that a doctor refers their patients to and colleagues in the same practice, if the doctor is a GP, as well as junior and senior colleagues and nurses.
- Non-medical colleagues could include administrative or secretarial staff and other health professionals with whom a doctor works, including pharmacists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, community mental health nurses or laboratory technical staff.
What do you mean by patients?
- Patients can be broader than those you directly provide medical care to. It could include the families or carers of your patients, or, if you don’t treat patients it could include students, suppliers or customers.
What if I don’t treat patients?
- If you don’t treat patients, and are not able to collect feedback from students, suppliers or customers instead, then you do not have to collect this feedback.
How many questionnaires do I have to collect?
- This will vary depending on which questionnaires you use. If you are using ours, then research from user testing with 1,450 doctors found that 15 colleagues and 34 patients gave the best picture of doctors’ practice.
- The research, carried out by Peninsula School of Medicine and Dentistry also found that these numbers were a realistic target for most doctors.
What happens if I don’t collect enough?
- There is no required minimum number of questionnaires you have to collect. Results may be less reliable if the number of completed questionnaires is less than that recommended for the tool you are using, but it does not invalidate the activity.
- If you are not able to achieve the recommended level of feedback, you might want to discuss at your appraisal how the questionnaires were distributed and returned, and whether you think the feedback you did receive covers the full scope of your practice.
- Further information is available at Chapter 5 of the document Information for appraisers (pdf). This guidance is based on how the GMC questionnaires were administered during two phases of piloting and research that involved over 1,450 doctors, 44,000 patients and 21,000 colleagues.
Do I have to use GMC questionnaires, if not what should I use?
- No, you don’t have to use our questionnaires.
- There are other robust feedback tools available, and your employer or designated body (the organisation arranging your appraisal) might choose to use one of these instead. There is no problem with them doing this.
I’m a GP, and I am the only doctor in my practice and I don’t work directly with many other health professionals. How feasible is it to get a rounded picture of my practice through feedback?
- We think this is entirely feasible as you don’t have to work directly alongside someone to be able to ask them for useful feedback. For example you can ask for feedback from pharmacists, district nurses, community midwives or doctors you have referred patients to.
- You may also have a practice manager, a medical secretary or other administrative support who could give you feedback.
What happens if someone says something negative about me? Will it count against me in my appraisal?
- Not necessarily, and it is inevitable that most doctors will at some point have negative feedback.
- You are not being scored against the feedback you collect. We are very clear in our guidance that the purpose is not to use questionnaires as some kind of screening process to identify outliers. Nor is it intended to be used as a judgemental tool.
- It is intended to provide doctors with information about their practice through the eyes of those they work with and treat. As such, it is useful information for any doctor in terms of their personal and professional development and we think most doctors welcome the opportunity to reflect on what it says about their practice.
- One of the main reasons we tested and piloted our questionnaires is to ensure that they are reliable and the research concluded that they are.
- It is important to remember that feedback from patients and colleagues is only one item of supporting information that doctors should bring to appraisal. Any conclusions about a doctor’s practice should take into account all of the supporting information they bring to appraisal and the wider practice context. No single piece of supporting information should be considered in isolation.
When do I have to start collecting feedback?
- Your employer or designated body, the organisation arranging your appraisal, will let you know when you need to start collecting this and what tool they want you to use to do so.
Where can I find your questionnaires?
- You can find out questionnaires, along with guidance on interpreting and using them and further frequently asked questions on our revalidation web pages.