Preparing Your Appraisal and Revalidation Portfolio

This revalidation portfolio course helps UK healthcare professionals build appraisal, revalidation and CPD evidence that meets their regulator's requirements without a last-minute scramble. It is written for doctors, nurses, midwives, nursing associates, pharmacy professionals, dental professionals, HCPC-registered professionals, optometrists, dispensing opticians, osteopaths, chiropractors and social workers in England, at any stage of their career. It is particularly useful if you are approaching your first revalidation, returning after a break, working part time, or working as a locum with no single home team.

The course starts from a simple distinction that many portfolios blur. CPD is the learning itself. Appraisal is the conversation, usually once a year, about your practice and plans. Revalidation, or a CPD declaration and audit, is the regulator's periodic check that you still meet its standards. Keep the three apart and planning becomes much easier: a good year of recorded CPD makes appraisal straightforward, and several good years make revalidation a matter of assembling what you already have.

It is designed to take approximately 2 hours, including the reading, reflection points, a written reflective account and a 15-question assessment, and it is self-paced. You buy it and take it on our course portal; the course catalogue lists related titles. Healthcare Practise UK is an independent provider. We are not affiliated with any UK regulator or the NHS, and no regulator has reviewed this course.

Module 2 summarises the current requirements of each UK healthcare regulator. The course stresses that rules change, so you should always check your regulator's website before you start collecting evidence.

The course also covers how the supporting systems differ across the four nations: designated bodies and responsible officers in England under the Medical Profession (Responsible Officers) Regulations 2010, SOAR in Scotland, MARS in Wales and the Northern Ireland arrangements. Our regulator guides set out each regulator's wider expectations, and the free CPD and revalidation tracker helps you count hours and records as you go.

The course has seven numbered modules, each ending with key points:

• Module 1, the landscape: why regulators check continuing fitness to practise, how appraisal, revalidation and CPD compare, the four-nation differences, and the four qualities of a useful portfolio: relevant, reflective, current and safe.
• Module 2, what each regulator requires: doctors, NMC registrants, HCPC and Social Work England, then dental, pharmacy, optical, osteopathic and chiropractic professionals.
• Module 3, planning your learning: a learning needs analysis built from your scope of practice, feedback, incidents and what is changing; a SMART personal development plan with weak and stronger examples; choosing a balanced mix of CPD; and recording it as you go.
• Module 4, supporting evidence: planning patient and colleague feedback, quality improvement that measures, changes and re-measures (a worked record-keeping audit shows the loop), significant events, complaints and compliments, and keeping every entry free of identifiable information.
• Module 5, reflection that shows insight: the regulators' 2019 joint statement on reflective practice, the What? So what? Now what? model alongside Gibbs and Kolb, side-by-side descriptive and reflective rewrites, and how reflective notes are treated in investigations.
• Module 6, the appraisal conversation: preparing a proportionate submission, using the discussion well, checking the summary and new PDP before sign-off, and raising health, workload or absence.
• Module 7, decisions and pitfalls: how revalidation recommendations, deferral and lapsed registration work; a table of common pitfalls with their consequences; breaks, part-time and portfolio careers; and a monthly, quarterly and annual routine.

Worked examples keep it practical: a physiotherapist selected for HCPC audit with forty certificates but no record of impact, a paramedic reconstructing a year of CPD from rotas, and a midwife tempted to write a fifth reflective account about a shift she barely remembers.

Declarations about CPD hours, practice hours, feedback, reflective accounts, health and character are statements to your regulator. The course is direct about this: a false declaration made under time pressure can lead to a fitness to practise investigation for dishonesty, which is treated far more seriously than a missed requirement. If you have not met a requirement, say so and ask for help; regulators have processes for exceptional circumstances, and doctors can be recommended for deferral.

The pitfalls table covers the problems responsible officers and regulators see again and again: leaving everything to the final month, evidence that covers only one of several roles, feedback never collected, identifiable patient details in a portfolio, inflated hours, unpaid fees and out-of-date contact details. For each it gives the consequence and the prevention, which is usually a small habit started early. If honesty in applications and declarations is a wider concern for you, our honesty in applications course covers it in depth.

Each module includes reflection points and short "apply it" tasks, such as rewriting one development goal in SMART form, or choosing one aspect of your practice you could audit in under two hours. At the end you write a reflective account to three prompts: the most important things you learned about preparing your portfolio, which gaps in your current evidence you will address first and how, and what routine you will adopt to keep the portfolio current.

The assessment has 15 scenario-based questions, such as whether an online course done alone counts as NMC participatory CPD, what a dentist has missed if all her hours fall in one year, and how a locum GP can gather colleague feedback across many practices. The pass mark is 12 (80%). On completion you receive a certificate of completion from Healthcare Practise UK. As the course says, passing supports your learning record but does not by itself demonstrate insight or competence.

For CPD, record the time you actually spend, which may be more or less than the two-hour estimate. Nurses, midwives and nursing associates should note that self-directed online learning done alone normally counts towards the NMC's individual CPD hours rather than its 20 participatory hours; if you work through it with colleagues and discuss it, it can become participatory. Doctors reflect on CPD at appraisal, and the GMC does not set fixed hours. Other regulators set their own rules, so check yours and any employer requirements. Keep the certificate and your reflection together.

Individually, the best time to take it is twelve months before your revalidation or renewal date, when there is still time to plan feedback, a quality improvement cycle and a reflective discussion. It also suits anyone starting a new role or returning to practice; our return to practice course covers the wider transition.

For teams, it gives practice managers, ward managers and appraisal leads a shared baseline on what good evidence looks like, which shortens appraisal preparation for everyone. Organisations can buy course credits and assign it to staff through the team credits scheme, with completion dates visible on a manager dashboard.

This course sits in our career and wellbeing courses, alongside titles that often feed straight into a portfolio:

• Locum and Agency Working, which includes gathering feedback and keeping a locum log across many placements;
• Burnout, Resilience and Wellbeing, for the wellbeing discussion that appraisal now expects;
• Ethics and Professional Standards in Aesthetic and Cosmetic Practice, for professionals whose private cosmetic work must appear in their supporting information.

If you want to strengthen the writing itself, the reflective practice course goes further into reflective models. Not sure where to start? The which course do I need tool suggests titles in four questions.