The process of preparing your appraisal forms will involve thinking about future objectives and personal educational needs, and reviewing your personal development plans (PDP) and Form 4 from the previous year. You should also include information about any additional educational or developmental activities you have undertaken.
At any given appraisal we expect you, the appraisee, to present and discuss supporting information from the past 12 months (or since last appraisal) covering the whole of your practice, including any OOH or private/non-NHS work.
Prior to starting your appraisal preparations, you should check the following:
For the purposes of revalidation, you need to have undertaken at least one colleague multi-source feedback (MSF) in the current 5-yearly cycle.
The MSF setup on SOAR takes around 3 weeks to complete. You are recommended to nominate at least 15 raters to give you the best chance of receiving the system-required minimum of 8 responses.
Please leave yourself enough time to get this organised so you don't rush it (and your raters) in the last minute.
Similar to MSF, Patient Survey Questionnaires (PSQ) is required as part of your revalidation requirements once in a 5-yearly cycle.
Unlike MSF however, PSQ can take up to months to organise and collate. Please liaise with your local health board admin team for assistance with the questionnaire and avoid leaving this until the last minute.
If PSQ is missing and you need it for revalidation, please liaise with your Appraisal Lead as soon as possible. Your Responsible Offer is likely to defer* your revalidation due date to allow you more time to complete this, but let them know so they can help you.
*Revalidation deferral is a neutral act and is designed for situations like this.
If you have a named-trainer for the purposes of Recognition of Trainer (RoT), please make sure you complete the RoT form on your Form 3 Domain 1 on SOAR. This should be automatically enabled/required through overnight imported data from Turas (where all trainer/trainee information is managed).
If your trainer details are not correct (e.g. you are no longer a trainer; or your trainer roles are not showing) please liaise with your local DME in the first instance to update/correct Turas. Once Turas has been amended then SOAR will be updated the next day.
If you are a Clinical Academic with an honorary role with the NHS - you need to complete the Academic Medicine form as part of your appraisal submission.
You should find this under Form 3 Domain 1 on SOAR. If the form is not there, please liaise with your health board admin team right away and ask them to enable this this for you by updating your profile details.
Typically a co-appraiser from the unversity is also required for a joint appraisal. If the appraisal has been set up but the co-appraiser has not been added, please liaise with the admin team to get this added ASAP. Otherwise the co-appraiser will not have access to any of your appraisal submission and will not be able to review and sign off your appraisal Form 4.
More information on clinical academics joint appraisals are available in the Resources section.
If you are a Staff Grade, Associate Specialist & Specialty (SAS) doctor, please visit the Scotland Deanery website for particular information on appraisal and CPD.
Additional information also available in our Resources section.
This page was last updated on: 06/01/2022
