Revalidation and national training surveys in light of coronavirus (COVID-19)

19 Mar 2020

The College has today (Thursday 19th March) received the following guidance from Nicola Cotter, Head of General Medical Council Scotland:

Revalidation and national training surveys in light of coronavirus (COVID-19)

Revalidation

From 17 March 2020, doctors who are due to revalidate before the end of September will have their revalidation date deferred for one year. We will keep this under review and make further deferrals as necessary.

We have made this decision to give responsible officers (ROs) and doctors more time to reschedule and complete appraisals, and to avoid the need for ROs to make revalidation recommendations to us during this time.

We’ve told ROs about our plans and next steps; and later today we’ll update our website with relevant information. We’ll also be in direct touch with the wider profession with before the end of this week.

National training surveys

We have decided to postpone this year’s national training surveys, which were due to launch next week.

We’ve been considering how the surveys will affect doctors in training and trainers, and how they may feel about being asked to complete it during this very pressured time.

However, we’re also mindful that the surveys provide us all with a unique evidence base to quality assure medical education and training. At this time, our intention is to run the survey at a later point in the year. Ideally this would be within the same training year, but this will obviously depend on how the pandemic impacts the health service over the coming weeks and months. We’ll update all trainees and trainers before the end of this week. And we’ll continue to monitor the situation and keep you informed as our planning progresses.

We understand that the profession and the wider health care team are working under immense pressure. We hope our decisions will support the health service in prioritising frontline clinical care for patients during this challenging time.