This part of the newsletter update is aimed at Appraisers, Appraisal Leads and Appraisal Admin colleagues.
For the all-user updates please check out part 1 of the newsletter.
We hope you find this useful and as ever, all feedback is welcomed!
William Liu
Training Manager (Medical Appraisal)
We outlined a number of ongoing SOAR issues in part 1 of the newsletter, below are a few additional notes for your consideration in the appraiser and admin roles:
The functions for all other roles (Appraiser, Admins, Appraisal Leads, RO etc) on SOAR will remain as is for now. The aim is to finish the redesign for appraisees first before moving on to other user roles.
As mentioned in part 1 of the newsletter, SOAR was designed to handle one annual appraisal at a time and this has been reinforced in the new setup.
When creating a new appraisal for your appraisee, please check (through Appraisal History) to make sure they have no other incomplete appraisals first. If there is, please liaise with the appraisee and/or the admin team to finalise this before creating a new meeting, otherwise it will cause submission issues for the appraisee.
Do not hesitate to contact the helpdesk for further assistance if needed.
We have dealt with a number of queries this year where appraisees had issues with either accessing their previously submitted forms, or just submitting their forms. We discovered the issue stemmed from the changing of the appraisal period (or sometimes the user's title in their profile). Allow me to explain...
When an appraisee submits their appraisal forms, a PDF is generated and stored on SOAR. The same applies to Form 4. The PDF will have the filename "Submitted Appraisal Forms for APPRAISAL_YEAR for APPRAISEE_TITLE_FIRSTNAME_LASTNAME" - changing the appraisal period or appraisee's title or name will knock out the PDF link and cause issues for the appraisee.
Plans are in place to address this in the longer term but in the interim try to avoid changing an appraisee's Title in their profile. If the appraisal period does need changed, check to see if anything has been submitted or signed off first. If not then it should be ok to change the appraisal period - but otherwise please liaise with the helpdesk (GMC number of appraisee and details of what needs changed) and we will assist from there.
Every night at around 1am, an automation kicks in on SOAR that links to GMC Connect, asking it to give us the date of when your appraisees' next revalidation due date is. So long as the GMC number and the designated bodies are matched between the two systems (and as long as your organisation has the necessary GMC Connect agreement signed, which all of you will have), the requested information is shared.
However, that is all that linkage does. Dates of when your appraisees are revalidated are not shared with us via GMC Connect. Equally if and when doctors' prescribed connections are changed on GMC Connect, this is not automatically communicated nor updated on SOAR.
Over the course of the year we have updated a few resources on the website, we thought it'd be useful to share these with you for your information:
Following last year's light touch approach, it was evident that the vast majority of organisations had returned to full appraisal and revalidation activities and as such, we returned to a full Medical Appraisal and Revalidation Quality Assurance (MARQA) review this year.
The finalised report was presented to the Revalidation Advisory Board Scotland (national stakeholders group) in November and you can find the published version on our website.
There are two forthcoming conferences that we would like to draw to your attention to:
Previously badged as the Medical Education conference, this event - scheduled for 23rd and 24th April 2026 - is for colleagues from all professional disciplines across health and social care with an interest in education and training, workforce development and digital solutions. This year's theme is "Collaborate. Innovate. Transform: Delivering change towards improving health, social care and other public services in Scotland"
There will be a number of plenary and parallel sessions run by all professional groups and an opportunity for joint sessions highlighting interprofessional learning.
There will be no charge for participation.
For more information please visit the event website.
If you missed this year's conference, which was delivered remotely on September 3rd, you can access recordings of all the sessions from the conference section of our website.
SAVE THE DATE: 2nd September 2026
The next conference has been pencilled in for Wednesday 2nd September 2026. Details of the programme and booking instructions will be shared nearer the time.
In the meantime if you have suggestions for topics or speakers we'd love to hear from you.
It has been five years since the pandemic when we converted the appraiser training programme from face-to-face to online remote delivery. We have been evolving the programme and delivery ever since with your feedback. Two of the most common feedback received are:
We are currently reviewing all the feedback and plan to make amendments to the training where we incorporate more practical opportunities within our sessions for both New and Refresher Appraiser courses.
The 2026/2027 Appraiser Training programme is being finalised and we intend to implement the changes for then. We are aiming to publish the schedule in February/March 2026. Details of this will be published on our website.
We have recently received questions from appraisers and Appraisal Leads about how Refresher Appraiser sessions are organised. Below is an overview of our process for identifying appraisers and issuing invitations:
There will be helpdesk support on SOAR during the festive holiday period from 23rd December, albeit slower than usual. Normal service will resume on 5th January 2026.
Please continue to send your SOAR tickets to the helpdesk via SOAR@nes.scot.nhs.uk
And finally...
Julie (Joolz) Hughes joined the team as Admin Officer on a part time basis back in March this year. She has picked things up very quickly and had settled well into the team. Unfortunately due to a change in circumstance Joolz will be leaving us at the end of December. We are grateful for her contributions in her time with us and we wish her and her husband the very best of luck in their new adventures abroad.
Hannah Asrih returned to the team in the summer as Admin Officer following her mat leave.
On behalf of all the team, we wish you and your loved ones all a safe and wonderful time over the festive break, and a very Happy New Year when it comes.
This page was last updated on: 08/12/2025
