Introduction to GP Appraisals
Once a year GP’s will have to undergo a formal appraisal.
National Association of Primary Care Educators, have produced an excellent selection of guidelines to Appraisals
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1: "Definitions and Aims of Appraisal"
5: "Keeping Appraisers up to Date"
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2: "Quality Assurance in Practice"
6: "Organisation of Appraisal" 10: "Evaluation of the GP Appraisal Process"
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What are the aims of appraisals?
Help you consolidate and improve on good performance, aiming towards excellence
Identify areas where further development might be necessary.
Set out personal and professional development needs.
Develop and maintain a Personal Development Plan
Helps you to gather evidence for, and assess progress towards re-validation under the seven core headings of the GMC’s “Good Medical Practice” document
Completion of a standardised pre-appraisal questionnaire:
Allows GP and Appraiser to gather information and reflect beforehand on:
Achievements and challenges in last 12 months (clinical & non-clinical), seen where relevant in the context of earlier appraisals.
Service, practice and wider objectives.
Personal and practice development needs and how these might be met
During protected time a confidential one-to-one supportive, constructive dialogue with a trusted GP colleague
An agreed action plan, about what each party is committed to doing. This should include the essentials of the Personal Development Plan (PDP).
The appraisal should identify individual needs that will be addressed through the PDP. The plan will also provide the basis for assessment of resource needs and clinical governance issues within a practice.
The detail of the appraisal discussion will be confidential to the participants.
The appraiser and appraisee should agree a written overview of the appraisal that should as a minimum include:
Are appraisals about catching out poorly performing Doctors?
It would be exceptional for serious concerns about performance to be first raised in an appraisal. The appraisal itself should be formative. However, both the appraiser and appraisee need to recognise that as registered medical practitioners they must protect patients when they believe that a colleague’s health, conduct or performance poses a threat to patients (GMC Good Medical Practice paragraphs 26 to 28).
Appraisal will provide a regular, structured system for recording progress towards revalidation and identifying development needs (as part of personal development plans) which will support individual GPs in achieving revalidation.
While appraisal and revalidation will be based largely or wholly on the same sources of information, and appraisal summaries will inform revalidation, the objectives of the two processes are distinct and complementary.
Revalidation involves an assessment against a standard of fitness to practise in line with the seven headings of the GMC’s guidance Good Medical Practice. It will allow a doctor’s licence to practise to be renewed.
Appraisals are concerned with the doctor’s professional development within his or her working environment and the needs of the organisation for which the doctor works.
Despite these differences, appraisal and revalidation should be linked for the sake of economy of effort, with the GMC’s Good Medical Practice as common ground. Despite the fact that appraisal and revalidation are distinct processes, the benefit of appropriate information sharing is considerable
It has been likened to your driving test!
Every 5 years we will have to undergo a fresh driving test (Revalidation)
Every Year the Government will provide free Driving lessons (Appraisals)