The purpose of revalidation is to provide greater assurance to patients and the public, employers and other healthcare professionals that licensed doctors are up to date and fit to practise.
Revalidation is a new way of regulating the medical profession that should:
Provide a focus for doctors' efforts to maintain and improve their practice
- Encourage the organisations in which doctors work to support their doctors to improve their practice and, where necessary, to identify and respond appropriately to emerging concerns about doctors at an early stage
Encourage patients to provide feedback about the medical care they have received from a doctor, to be considered in their annual appraisals
In these ways, revalidation will contribute to the on-going improvement in the quality of medical care delivered to patients throughout the UK.
Those Involved in Designing Revalidation
The GMC has overall responsibility for revalidation – see: www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/revalidation
The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges is responsible for facilitating the work of the Colleges, Faculties and Surgical Specialty Associations. It has encouraged them to share their experience, skills and knowledge around the development of methods for revalidation in a number of ways: Collating and sharing College and Faculty revalidation progress updates.
Encouraging any specialty revalidation funding applications to be in collaboration with at least one other specialty. If a specialty application is submitted that is not collaborative, a strong case must be made as to why it is not. The Revalidation Project Governance Committee also receives quarterly progress updates on all projects that they have agreed to fund.
Asking Colleges and Faculties to share best practice around development activities and projects at relevant meetings such the Directors of CPD or the Revalidation Steering Group.
Establishing working groups for topics that are of wide concern across the specialties and contain a range of representatives from Colleges and other stakeholders.
Hosting two regular revalidation meeting groups, as well as the Revalidation Project Governance Committee .
Ensuring specialty input into the NHS Pathfinder Pilots via Academy Leads.
Working closely with other external organisations to share expertise more widely.
The Medical Royal Colleges and Specialty Associations offer their expertise in setting educational, professional and clinical standards for the development of revalidation, with a focus on continuous development.
Specific revalidation guidance for T&O on which the BOA has led can be found here.
What the BOA Does to Support Revalidation of Surgeons
We attach the utmost importance to revalidation - patients want it and our members are fully committed to it. As a consequence we structure our Annual Congress programmes around a five year cycle of revalidation instructional courses for trauma and orthopaedic surgeons.