The GMC does not set a minimum number of CPD hours or credits for doctors. What it requires is that every licensed doctor carries out CPD every year, has an annual appraisal covering their whole scope of practice, and revalidates, usually every five years, on the recommendation of their responsible officer. The old “50 credits a year, 250 over five years” rule that many doctors still quote is no longer expected: the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges says collecting CPD credits is no longer expected for medical appraisal, although some colleges still give their own guidance.
Revalidation rests on six types of supporting information, of which CPD is only one. This guide sets out what the GMC actually requires, what has changed since 2023, how patient and colleague feedback fits in, what happens if you do not engage, and where employer mandatory training and safeguarding sit alongside revalidation.
At a glance: Nexis CPD offers £9 CPD-accredited online courses relevant to medical practice, such as Sepsis Awareness, Mental Capacity Act and Data Protection, each with a verifiable e-certificate, and any three courses cost £18. They are general CPD, not royal college or GMC-approved programmes.
How does GMC revalidation work?
Every licensed doctor must revalidate to show they are fit to practise and to keep their licence to work in the UK. The legal framework is the Medical Profession (Responsible Officers) Regulations 2010 and the GMC’s licensing and revalidation regulations of 2012, in force since December 2012.
The GMC’s requirements come down to three things:
- Connect to a designated body and responsible officer, usually through your employer or contracting organisation.
- Have an annual appraisal that covers your whole scope of practice, including any private, locum or voluntary work.
- Be revalidated, with your responsible officer making a recommendation to the GMC, usually every five years.
Under regulation 11 of the 2010 Regulations, the responsible officer must ensure the designated body carries out regular appraisals and must make recommendations to the GMC about doctors’ fitness to practise. The appraisal is the engine; the recommendation is the output.
What supporting information do doctors need for revalidation?
The GMC’s guidance on supporting information sets out six types, discussed at appraisal and reflected on:
- Continuing professional development (CPD)
- Quality improvement activity
- Significant events
- Feedback from patients or those to whom you provide medical services
- Feedback from colleagues
- Compliments and complaints
The emphasis throughout is on reflection. Supporting information that is collected but never discussed or reflected on does little for revalidation. The appraisal conversation is where it becomes evidence.
How many CPD hours do doctors need?
The GMC is explicit: it does not mandate the number of CPD points you should collect for revalidation. Its CPD guidance says doctors must carry out CPD activities every year, covering their whole scope of practice, and reflect on what they have learned.
What happened to 50 credits a year?
For years, many doctors worked to a benchmark of 50 CPD credits a year and 250 over the five-year cycle. That figure came from the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, not the GMC. The Academy’s Core Principles for CPD, updated in 2023, now say that collection of CPD credits is no longer expected for medical appraisals, although some royal colleges and faculties may continue to provide individual guidance. Its CPD FAQs add that the GMC has never mandated a specific amount of CPD or number of credits per year.
The shift is deliberate. Counting credits encouraged doctors to collect certificates rather than reflect on practice. The current approach asks a better question: what did you learn, why did it matter to your practice, and what changed?
In practice, that means a doctor with fewer, well-chosen activities and thoughtful reflections is in a stronger position at appraisal than one with a long list of certificates and nothing written about them. It also means CPD can take forms that never generated credits: reading and discussing a new guideline with colleagues, reviewing your own referral patterns, teaching, or working through a case that went unexpectedly. What turns any of these into CPD is the record of what you learned and how it changed your practice.
That said, check your own royal college. Some colleges still recommend a volume of CPD or run their own schemes, and your appraiser may expect you to follow your college’s guidance. It is not a GMC requirement, but it may be part of what a good appraisal looks like in your specialty.
Patient and colleague feedback
Two of the six types have a minimum frequency in the GMC’s guidance:
- Patient feedback: at least once in each revalidation cycle, you must collect feedback from patients using a formal solicited feedback exercise.
- Colleague feedback: at least once in your revalidation cycle, you must collect, reflect on and discuss at appraisal feedback from colleagues, and the colleagues asked must include people who are not doctors, anaesthesia associates or physician associates.
Both exercises take planning. Doctors in non-patient-facing roles, or working across several sites, need to agree early with their responsible officer how feedback will be gathered. Leaving it to the final year of the cycle is an easy way to end up needing a deferral.
What happens if you do not meet revalidation requirements?
When your responsible officer makes a recommendation, the GMC can confirm your licence, defer your revalidation submission date, or withdraw your licence for failure to comply.
- Deferral is not a sanction. The GMC says that if your revalidation is deferred, you continue to hold your licence and can practise as usual. It usually means more time is needed to complete the supporting information.
- Non-engagement is different. The GMC says any doctor not sufficiently engaging with revalidation is putting their licence to practise at risk. Before withdrawing a licence, the GMC gives the doctor 28 days to make written representations, and there is a right of appeal.
If you think you may struggle to complete your supporting information in time, raise it with your appraiser and responsible officer early. A planned conversation about a realistic timescale is a normal part of how revalidation works; silence is what turns a manageable gap into a concern about engagement.
The practical lesson is that engagement matters more than perfection. A doctor who is short of colleague feedback but engaging with their responsible officer is in a very different position from one who has stopped responding.
Is mandatory training part of revalidation?
Not directly. The GMC does not publish a list of mandatory training topics. Statutory and mandatory training for NHS doctors, such as fire safety, information governance, infection prevention, resuscitation and safeguarding, is set by employers, often drawing on frameworks such as the Skills for Health Core Skills Training Framework. It is part of your employment, and it may be discussed at appraisal as part of your whole scope of practice, but it is not what the GMC means by CPD.
Our guide to mandatory training for healthcare workers covers the NHS framework in detail.
Safeguarding
Safeguarding is the exception where the GMC itself speaks to training. Good medical practice, in effect since 30 January 2024, says doctors must act promptly on concerns about a patient at risk of abuse or neglect. The GMC’s guidance Protecting children and young people says doctors must keep up to date with best practice through training that is appropriate to their role.
The GMC does not specify a level. In practice, the level expected for each role is set out in the intercollegiate document, whose fifth edition, Safeguarding children and young people and children and young people in care: competencies for health care staff, was published in autumn 2025 and replaced the 2019 and 2020 documents. Depending on role, doctors may need training at a higher level than an introductory awareness course provides, which may include face-to-face or multi-agency elements. Check the level your role requires against the current edition.
Writing CPD reflections that help at appraisal
Because the GMC does not count credits, the quality of reflection carries the weight. A reflection does not need to be long. A useful structure is three short answers:
- Why did I do this? Link it to your personal development plan, a significant event, a complaint, a change in guidance or a gap you noticed in your practice.
- What did I learn? One or two specific points, not a summary of the whole session.
- What will I do differently? A concrete change, or a reason you decided your current practice was already sound.
Reflections written this way make the appraisal conversation easier and give your appraiser something to discuss rather than a list to count. They also answer the question the GMC’s guidance keeps returning to: how your CPD relates to your whole scope of practice.
Avoiding the common gaps
- CPD that covers only your main role. If you also do private work, teaching, medico-legal reports or management, your CPD and reflection need to reach those areas too.
- Mandatory training logged as CPD with no reflection. It may be relevant, but a list of employer modules is not evidence of development on its own.
- Significant events with no learning recorded. The event is not the evidence; what you learned from it is.
- Feedback exercises left too late. Patient and colleague feedback take weeks to organise and analyse.
Locum, portfolio and private practice doctors
Doctors who work across several organisations face the same requirements with more logistics. The GMC expects your annual appraisal to cover your whole scope of practice, which means bringing information from every place you work, including complaints, compliments and significant events from each. Locums and doctors in independent practice need a designated body and responsible officer like everyone else; where there is no obvious employer, the GMC’s guidance explains how to find a suitable connection. Keeping a single running log of CPD, feedback and events across all your roles, updated as you go, is the simplest way to arrive at appraisal with complete information.
Physician associates and anaesthesia associates
Since 13 December 2024, physician associates and anaesthesia associates have been regulated by the GMC. They are not yet revalidating: the GMC says it will set individual revalidation dates for PAs and AAs in due course, after consulting on the rules. In the meantime, the GMC says they should start having annual appraisals and collecting and reflecting on supporting information across the same six categories as doctors.
A practical CPD approach for doctors
- Plan from your personal development plan, agreed at your last appraisal, not from whatever courses arrive in your inbox.
- Cover your whole scope of practice. Private work, teaching, management and locum sessions all count and all need CPD that reflects them.
- Reflect, briefly, on everything you log. A few lines on what changed in your practice is worth more than a certificate.
- Book patient and colleague feedback early in the cycle, especially if your practice makes it awkward to collect.
- Keep quality improvement and significant events visible. They are part of revalidation, not optional extras.
- Keep mandatory training current for your employer, and check your safeguarding level against the current intercollegiate document.
- Check your college’s guidance on CPD volume if you are unsure what your appraiser expects.
Other healthcare professions work to quite different models. Nurses revalidate every three years with 35 CPD hours, and HCPC registrants face random audits; see our guides to CPD for nurses and CPD for HCPC registrants.
Which courses suit doctors?
For doctors wanting short, structured refreshers on topics that come up across specialties, logged as general CPD with a reflection:
- Sepsis Awareness: recognition and escalation, useful for doctors outside acute specialties
- Mental Capacity Act: the five principles, capacity assessment and best interests (see the Mental Capacity Act explained)
- Data Protection and GDPR Awareness: confidentiality, records and data breaches
Those three together cost £18 rather than £27, because any three courses trigger the pay-for-2-get-3 offer. Add them to the cart and the discount applies automatically. Doctors in community and care settings often add Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS), and practice teams can use Conflict Management.
Said plainly: these are general CPD-accredited awareness courses. They are not royal college CPD-approved events, do not meet your employer’s statutory and mandatory training unless your employer accepts them, and are not a substitute for safeguarding training at the level your role requires under the intercollegiate document.
Frequently asked questions
How many CPD hours do doctors need for revalidation?
The GMC does not set a minimum. It says it does not mandate the number of CPD points doctors should collect, but that doctors must carry out CPD every year covering their whole scope of practice and reflect on it at appraisal.
Is the 50 CPD credits a year rule still in place?
No. The 50 credits a year and 250 over five years benchmark came from the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which updated its Core Principles for CPD in 2023 to say collecting credits is no longer expected for medical appraisal. Some royal colleges still give their own guidance.
What are the six types of supporting information for revalidation?
Continuing professional development, quality improvement activity, significant events, feedback from patients, feedback from colleagues, and compliments and complaints.
How often do doctors need patient and colleague feedback?
At least once in each revalidation cycle for each. Patient feedback must be collected through a formal solicited exercise, and colleague feedback must include people who are not doctors, anaesthesia associates or physician associates.
What happens if a doctor's revalidation is deferred?
A deferral means the submission date moves back, usually because more supporting information is needed. The GMC says a doctor whose revalidation is deferred continues to hold their licence and can practise as usual.
Can the GMC withdraw a licence for not revalidating?
Yes, for failure to comply. The GMC says doctors not sufficiently engaging with revalidation put their licence at risk. Before withdrawal, the doctor has 28 days to make written representations, and there is a right of appeal.
Do physician associates have to revalidate?
Not yet. PAs and AAs have been regulated by the GMC since 13 December 2024, and the GMC says it will set individual revalidation dates in due course. Meanwhile they should have annual appraisals and collect supporting information in the same six categories.
CPD courses for doctors
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This article is general information, not legal or regulatory advice. Revalidation requirements are set by the GMC and applied by your responsible officer, and royal college CPD guidance varies by specialty; always check the current GMC guidance and your college’s requirements. A CPD awareness course is not a regulated qualification and does not replace employer mandatory training or role-specific safeguarding training.