Application process
We process your application in different stages and have summarised these below to help you understand what’s involved
Step one: Initial checks
A member of the specialist applications team will initially check:
- you’re eligible for the application you’ve made
- we’ve received the appropriate number of uploaded documents
- you’ve provided completed pro-formas to verify your evidence
- you’ve nominated the correct type and number of referees.
If you have missed any evidence or the information you gave us is incorrect, we’ll contact you to let you know.
Step two: Assigning to an adviser
If your application passes the initial checks, it will be assigned to your adviser. They will contact you to confirm that your application evidence will be reviewed, and you will receive their comments within 30 calendar days.
We’ll also contact your verifiers to confirm they completed the pro-forma you’ve submitted and send out requests to your referees to complete a structured report.
Step three: Adviser comments
Once your adviser has reviewed your evidence, they will update your online application with their comments highlighting any additional evidence you may need to provide to strengthen your application.
Please note that any evidence that didn’t meet our anonymisation requirements will be deleted from your application and you’ll be asked to resubmit it once it’s been fully redacted. In line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the patient confidentiality standards in Good medical practice, we cannot keep a record of documents that haven’t been redacted in line with our anonymisation guidance.
Step four: Adding/amending evidence
You’ll have another 60 days to provide additional and amended evidence after we’ve sent our advice on your initial submission of evidence.
The 60-day period is provided to ensure you have adequate time to gather any additional evidence and ensure appropriate verification of your evidence. You can also carry out any amendments, redaction and grouping of evidence, based on the comments from your adviser.
To make best use of your 60-day period, it is important that you try to address the areas highlighted by your adviser in full before resubmitting your application, rather than make multiple submissions.
This is because once you resubmit, your adviser is given 15 working days to review your additional and amended evidence, and this time is taken from your 60-day period. Each submission will mean less available time remains for you to make any subsequent amendments if they are required and will add time on to the processing of your application.
While small extensions can be provided in certain circumstances, in order to align with the estimated submission date communicated to the Royal College or Faculty, it is important that these are kept to a minimum.Once your application is resubmitted your adviser will review the evidence and provide comments again, if required, or accept all of your evidence and begin preparing samples of evidence for verification.
Step five: PSV
Samples of your evidence will be prepared, and we will ask your verifiers to register for our secure document sharing site GMC Connect. Once all of your verifiers have registered and their accounts have been approved, the sample of your evidence will be shared with them.
We will then ask that they respond to confirm two statements; that they verified the evidence and that it is an accurate record of your experience.
Step six: Application finalisation
Your application is deemed complete when we’ve:
- received all of your evidence, including any extra information we requested
- verified a sample of your evidence directly with your verifiers
- received all of your structured reports
Step seven: Evaluation of your evidence
We’ll then send it for evaluation by the relevant royal college, faculty or associate. We’ll let you know when we’ve done this. From the point we send your application to the royal college, faculty or associate, it takes up to three months until we give you your final decision.
Step eight: Decision
We get a recommendation from the royal college, faculty or associates on whether your application should be successful. However, this is not binding on the GMC, the final decision on whether to enter your name on the Specialist or GP Register is ours to make.
Help us complete your application quickly
Your application can take between three to six months before it’s complete and can be sent to the royal college or faculty for evaluation.
To help us process your application quickly you should:
- submit any additional evidence within the deadline set by your adviser
- speak to your referees before you give us their names and make sure their contact information is up to date
- don’t submit your online application until you’re ready and your evidence is prepared. The main reason applications are unsuccessful is because they are incomplete and the evidence requested in our guidance hasn’t been provided.
Contacting us
If you have any queries, you can get in touch with us by calling 0161 923 6602 or by emailing: portfolio@gmc-uk.org
Once your application is assigned to a specialist applications adviser, they will be best placed to help you. We’ll update you by email know when major milestones in the application process have been passed.
We recommend that you contact us to discuss your application before you submit it.
What happens to my evidence?
Hard copy evidence
Any evidence you send to us that we don’t accept will be returned to you. We’ll also return all the hard copy evidence we accepted after we’ve issued your final decision. It's important that your GMC registered address is up to date so we can safely return your hard copy evidence to you.
Electronic evidence
Any evidence you uploaded electronically that we don’t accept will be returned to you to review and remove via GMC Online.
