Medical appraisal is now a universal process for the profession, supporting accountability, professional development and patient care. The quality of a doctor’s appraisal inputs is fundamental to the quality of their appraisal. Organisations and doctors share the responsibility for gathering information about practice to support appraisal and clinical governance processes. Doctors and their organisations should agree items of information to support these needs. To minimise the burden of documentation and increase objectivity organisations should, where feasible and appropriate, provide this information to their doctors.

Improving the inputs to medical appraisal (NHS England 2016) aims to promote improvements to the inputs to medical appraisal by:

• describing the current understanding and providing principles
• reviewing the different categories of appraisal inputs in the light of these
• providing useful tools and examples of good practice

This guidance is relevant to all designated bodies in England. It is of particular importance to responsible officers, appraisers, human resource, clinical governance, information governance departments and doctors. It will also be of interest to patient and public representatives and other groups and bodies with an interest in the quality of healthcare.

Annexes

• Annex A: Doctor’s Medical Appraisal Checklist
• Annex B: Generic medical in-post review template
• Annex C: Assessing supporting information in context of volume of work
• Annex D: Template for agreed expected information at appraisal
• Annex E: Obtaining patient feedback in non-standard situations
• Annex F: Examples of good practice in areas relating to appraisal inputs