7. Keeping up to date, and maintaining your performance
 
 You must keep your knowledge and skills up to date throughout your working life. In particular, you should take part regularly in educational activities which develop your competence and performance You must work with colleagues to monitor and maintain your awareness of the quality of the care you provide. In particular, you must:
• take part in regular and systematic medical and clinical audit,
recording data honestly. Where necessary you must respond to the
results of audit to improve your practice, for example by undertaking
further training;
• respond constructively to assessments and appraisals of your
professional competence and performance.
Some parts of medical practice are governed by law or are regulated by other statutory bodies. You must observe and keep up to date with the laws and statutory codes of practice which affect your work.
GMC Good Medical Practice, paragraphs 5, 7, 6

 

      You need to plan your continuing education with care, trying to identify and fill gaps in your knowledge and performance. Honest self-evaluation and audit of your own performance is emerging as the basis of personal development plans in general practice. You need to be critical about the quality and effectiveness of the education on which you rely to maintain your skills. You should ensure that the educational methods that you use are of high quality and are appropriate. You should beware of being over-dependent on sources of information and educational events that may be commercially biased (e.g. meetings sponsored by companies whose contents are dictated by the company’s products).
The ways in which you maintain high-quality clinical care need to reflect the breadth and nature of the discipline. In maintaining good care you should therefore be aware of a range of ways of monitoring and improving care (e.g. audit, significant event analysis, risk management) and involve all your team members in maintaining and improving the quality of care which your practice provides. Clinical governance provides a framework which may help you do this.

The excellent GP
- is up to date with developments in clinical practice and regularly reviews his or her knowledge and performance
- uses these reviews to develop practice and personal development plans
- uses a range of methods to monitor different aspects of care and to meet his or her educational needs
- has information available on laws relating to general practice
- has a named person in the practice who is responsible for employment matters and Health and Safety at work, and ensures compliance with them

The unacceptable GP
- has little knowledge of developments in clinical practice
- has limited insight into the current state of his or her knowledge or performance
- selects educational opportunities which do not reflect his or her learning needs
- does not audit care in his or her practice, or does not feed the results back into practice
- is hostile to external audit or advice
- does not understand or respond to the law relating to general practice
- where employing staff, neither understands nor meets his or her responsibilities as an employer
- has unsafe premises, e.g. hazardous chemicals or sharp instruments are inadequately protected