The revalidation of medical professionals is the subject of a White Paper entitled ‘Trust, Assurance and Safety – The Regulation of Health Professionals in the 21st Century (2007)’. Whilst the White Paper covers the regulation of all medical professions, it focuses mainly on the regulation of doctors. The Department of Health have recently published a report entitled ‘Medical Revalidation – Principles and Next Steps’, which outlines the revalidation process more fully. The purpose of revalidation is to certify that licensed doctors remain up to date and continue to be fit to practise in their chosen area of specialisation.
 
Revalidation has three elements:

• to confirm that licensed doctors practice in accordance with the General Medical Council’s generic standards (relicensure)
  
• for doctors in the specialist register and GP register to confirm that they meet the standards appropriate for their specialty (recertification), and
  
• to identify for further investigation, and remediation, poor practice where local systems are not robust enough to do this or do not exist.

Relicensing
All doctors will need to renew their license to practise every five years. It should be seen as a confirmation of fitness to practice. It will rely primarily on information derived from a revised and strengthened form of annual appraisal, which will usually include a range of evidence including periodic multi source feedback from patients, peers and colleagues.

Recertification
Recertification will be based on standards for specialist practice set by the Medical Royal Colleges, working with specialty associations and approved by the General Medical Council (GMC). The evidence that doctors are meeting those standards will need to be drawn primarily from their actual practice. The Medical Royal Colleges will design methods of evaluation that are fair, effective and fit for purpose.

It is proposed that the two processes will result in a single recommendation to the GMC covering both elements of revalidation.

Medical revalidation: Where are we now? Where might we be going? 
- College President Peter Furness' personal perspective

Enquiries: psu@rcpath.org