Revalidation requirements: Practice-related feedback

As part of your revalidation, you must have obtained five pieces of practice-related feedback in the three year period since your registration was last renewed or you joined the register.

Feedback is useful in helping you to improve, enhance and reflect upon practice. Keep notes on the content of your feedback, including how you used it to reflect on your practice.

Feedback can be gained from a variety of sources. For example, you might receive feedback:

• directly from patients, service users, carers, students or colleagues
• through reviewing complaints, team performance reports and serious event reviews
• through clinical supervision, one-to-ones or annual appraisals.

If it is group or team feedback, it is important that you are clear about the specific impact that the feedback had on your own practice.

Feedback can be given in a formal or informal way and may be written or verbal. You may not always need to seek feedback.  Many organisations collect feedback in a variety of ways, so you may already have access to this. 

When seeking feedback you should:

• be sensitive to the timing and circumstances
• assure them that your professional relationship with them will not be adversely affected by any feedback that they provide
• assure them they do not have to provide feedback if they prefer not to.

In some cases, you might want to consider using a third party to seek feedback on your behalf.

The NMC have produced a template to help you record feedback along with some examples of completed forms to support you with this - you can access these resources on the practice related feedback page of the NMC website.