FAQs

As a surgical trainer, do I have to go through this process?

Yes, the GMC has introduced mandatory approval.

I only teach trainees on occasional theatre lists – do I have to go through this process?

At present the GMC is stipulating that only those with a named educational role will need to be approved. That means those who are a named clinical or educational supervisor. Those who do not hold these roles but wish to be approved by the GMC are welcome to do so.

How often will I have to go through this process?

At present the GMC is planning to run the approval process over a five-year cycle, and it will run in tandem with your ‘standard’ appraisal process, so you will need to be approved as a trainer every five years, although you should aim to collect evidence on an ongoing basis.

How is the GMC going to implement this process?

The GMC will require your educational organiser to hold details of all those who have a named training role within their domain and details of all those who have been approved for that role. This approval process will be run in a similar fashion to the current appraisal process in that you will have to provide evidence of your training activity for an ‘educational appraisal’.

Where can I find more information about the GMC process?

More information can be found on the GMC trainer approval webpage here. If there are other questions you would like answered then please email the faculty at fst@rcsed.ac.uk and we can add your query and the answer to this list.

How can I provide evidence that I meet these standards?

You can provide evidence of your training activity mapped to the Faculty’s Standards for Surgical Trainers. This is an explicit statement of what a surgical trainer should do when training. We are currently working with ISCP to integrate our Trainer Standards and our Journal evidence gathering tool tool into ISCP version 10. This will ensure that the wealth of data you already put into ISCP in the form of WBAs will be automatically available and reduce the administrative burden of this process.

Who will look at the evidence I provide?

At present, the proposal is that your ‘educational’ appraisal will take place at the same time as your ‘standard’ appraisal. This means that it is likely that your normal appraiser will also perform your educational appraisal and assess the evidence that you have provided for your training role using the seven AoME domains. This means that the person performing this role may not be a surgeon and may not even be a trainer.  The FST Standards for Trainers are designed to make this a straightforward and unambiguous task for you to provide robust evidence for this purpose. As with revalidation, this appraiser will then make a recommendation to your educational organiser (deanery or LETB) as to whether or not you meet the standard.