Reviewing a Doctor's Performance Every Five Years

In the news recently an article caught my eye on the subject of appraisals for doctors in the UK every five years. The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, says that the system hopes to address gaps in the care that doctors give their patients. If a doctor does not pass their appraisal, they would be prevented from practising until the issue is rectified. The change in the system has come as a result of years of discussion centered around maintaining high quality care given to patients, and making sure doctors perform consistently informed, compassionate and intelligent care. The secretary was keen to emphasise that the evaluation of doctors would be a process, and procedures would be put in place to rectify any deficiencies in care and address them early on.
The disadvantages put forward by this article and another (both links are below) are that there is already too much bureaucracy in the NHS and there are concerns that this system may just add to the piles of paperwork that already exist unnecessarily. However, there are also clear advantages to the new system, mainly that this focuses on a preventative measure and does not need a mistake before an investigation takes place, which is better for patients in a doctor's care. Overall, the system itself will be reviewed with time, and as Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS put it, "Implementation will be quite difficult to begin with and I suspect it will be imperfect but it is better to start than to wait for perfection."


Article on BBC News: here
Article on The Telegraph: here
To find out more about the revalidation system: here
Image taken from: here

Thank you for reading!