Doctors to be given 'fit to practise' tests

15:37, 19 October 2012

LONDON. October 19. KAZINFORM Doctors will be given annual assessments and full five-yearly checks to ensure they are still competent and fit to practise starting from December, the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, will announce today in a surprise move that puts an end to more than a decade of negotiation.

Revalidation of doctors had its origins in public concern over scandals such as the deaths of the Bristol babies and the botched surgery of gynaecologist Rodney Ledward. The former General Medical Council president Sir Donald Irvine said as early as 2000, when he launched the revalidation proposals, that the public assumed checks were made that doctors continued to be fit to practise - but that was not the case, the Guardian reports.

As the start date was finally announced, Niall Dickson, chief executive of the GMC, said it was a "historic moment ... the biggest change in medical regulation for more than 150 years".

The GMC will be responsible for revalidation, which will be on the basis of a dossier of evidence of a doctor's competence compiled over five years. This will include annual assessments and patient questionnaires.

The negotiations with doctors' leaders at the British Medical Association over how revalidation would be carried out has caused some of the long delays. The BMA has traditionally been wary, while saying that it supports the principle.

Plans were under way at the time of the Shipman inquiry in 2005, but Dame Janet Smith, who chaired it, was strongly critical, saying the proposals would not ensure that failing and bad doctors were picked up, so they had to be reworked.

Dickson said: "The decision to press ahead with revalidation after many years of preparation and planning means that we'll be able to have a comprehensive system of regular checks for all doctors registered in the UK. Every NHS doctor is already supposed to have an annual appraisal but until revalidation appeared on the horizon many organisations were simply not achieving this. Now both the NHS and private healthcare organisations have begun to get their act together.

"Revalidation is not a panacea. It is not a magic bullet to guarantee that care is safe or that every doctor is perfect. It will take time to settle in. We will need to evaluate and improve the model."

Hunt, in one of his first major announcements in the job, said: "We want to have the best survival rates in Europe for the major killer diseases.

"Doctors save lives every day and making sure they are up to speed with the latest treatments and technologies will help them save even more. This is why a proper system of revalidation is so important."

The health secretary appears to have decided it is important to get the system up and running and sort out problems later. The NHS medical director, Sir Bruce Keogh, admitted that the system would not be immediately perfect, but said: "My personal view is that it is better to start than wait for perfection. I think that every doctor has a duty to be able to describe what they do and to define how well they do it - if you can't do that you forfeit some of your professionalism. The process of assessing doctors in this new revalidation process is based on a beefed-up appraisal system within the NHS."

First to be revalidated in December will be medical leaders. From next April, all doctors will be in the process.