UKPHR revalidation scheme for practitioners

Introduction

UKPHR’s Board agreed to implement revalidation for all its specialist registrants from 01 April 2019. This replaced the previous requirement of 5 yearly re-registration, which specialists were required to complete as part of maintaining their UKPHR registration.

When the Board agreed to introduce the requirement for 5-yearly revalidation for specialist registrants, it said that it would in the future want to introduce a revalidation requirement for practitioner registrants as well. The Board said that the revalidation scheme for practitioner registrants would be differentiated to reflect the lower risk associated with practitioners’ practice (compared with specialists’ practice).

Practitioner revalidation working party and recommendation

UKPHR formed a working party to help it settle a revalidation scheme for practitioner registrants. The focus of its work was to identify an alternative to the annual professional appraisal for specialists in order to meet the Board’s aim of a differentiated revalidation scheme for practitioners.

The working party comprised some Board members and representatives of practitioner registration schemes, workforce leads and two practitioner registrants. We also sought to make the composition representative of the four nations of the UK. The working party held several meetings and considered various options. After much discussion, the working party put forward to the Board a recommendation that UKPHR should not expect professional appraisal for practitioner registrants but should instead require practitioner registrants, as part of their revalidation, to undertake a peer discussion in each 5-year cycle of registration. The peer discussion should be verified and submitted to UKPHR, fully documented, as part of the revalidation application.

UKPHR Board’s decision

The Board was responsive to this recommendation and agreed to consult stakeholders, practitioner registrants included, on this proposal. A consultation took place between July and October 2019. Responses to the consultation demonstrated clear support for this proposal to be implemented.

After considering these responses in November 2019, the Board approved a revalidation scheme for practitioner registrants. The scheme will include the requirement for one peer discussion in each 5-year registration cycle, and practitioners will have to apply for revalidation once every five years.

The Board acknowledged that UKPHR needs time to carry out preparatory works before implementing the new revalidation scheme for practitioners and the Board asked for the revalidation requirements, including the peer discussion to be piloted first.

At the time of writing, therefore, no date has been set for when the revalidation scheme, including the requirement for a peer discussion, will go live.

Next Steps

Following the Board’s decision in November 2019, UKPHR’s next steps will include:

• Revising the draft revalidation scheme
• Rewriting the scheme guidance, taking into account the changes that have been made
• Piloting the proposed revalidation scheme, especially the peer discussion
• Putting in place and testing UKPHR’s online revalidation module
• Setting a start date for implementation

It is envisaged that UKPHR will be ready to move completely from re-registration to revalidation towards the end of 2020 or early in 2021.

In the meantime, the existing system for 5-yearly re-registration continues to apply and we continue to alert practitioner registrants to its requirements when they approach their fifth-year anniversary.

Conclusion

This report is for your information at this stage. We will communicate with practitioners regularly this year as we develop the scheme, guidance and processes. We will keep other stakeholders informed, too. We will look to develop FAQs for publication on our website as well. We will ask some practitioners, who are approaching their first re-registration, to help us pilot the revalidation requirements.

A table is provided below which sets out the current draft revalidation requirements and the re-registration requirements for comparison. This will give a reasonably good idea of what will be required of practitioner registrants when revalidation is implemented.

I hope this update is helpful and if you have any further queries or questions, please feel free to contact the office at register@ukphr.org.