News and Events

Being mindful of the clinical pressures on our NHS colleagues, some of our pre-pandemic business-as-usual activities were paused to allow them to focus on patient care. The Scottish government sponsored MARQA (Medical Appraisal and Revalidation Quality Assurance) review was postponed as the review period would have coincided with the pausing of activities. It is likely to be postponed next year as well to allow for workforce recovery. Similarly, there were no Responsible Officers development day organised this year.

Below are some of the activities we were able to engage in:

Support for Appraisal Leads and Appraisal Admins

NES organised two National Appraisal Leads meeting via MS Teams on 20 April and 30 November 2021 respectively.  Both meetings were very well attended and received.

The meeting in April focused on the “light touch” approach to appraisal that has been adopted in the boards following CMO communication re systems flexibility.  In the November meeting, the Appraisal Leads discussed the wellbeing aspects of appraisal and considered its challenges and how best to facilitate this.

For the Appraisal Admin teams group, NES organised two “coffee morning” style catch up meetings on 6 October 2021 and 8 March 2022.  There have been numerous team changes locally at the health boards, so these meetings proved a useful platform for new members to network with others and allowed us to explain NES’ role in supporting the group.  In the March meeting we ran a demo on SOAR based on some of the more common queries received on the helpdesk and this was well received.

Team Changes

Eilidh Henderson joined the team in October 2021 and took up the new role of Senior Officer to support and deputise for the Training Manager where appropriate and increase the team’s capacity in the running of the training courses as well as SOAR user support.  Eilidh joins us from the NES Training Programme Management team in the deanery and her experience and knowledge will complement our work very well going forward.

It is with sadness we announce that Stacey Lucas will be leaving at the end of June 2022 for a 12-month secondment with the NES NMAHP team. Since joining in October 2016 Stacey has been an integral part of the team, assisting with the SOAR helpdesk and running admin on countless appraiser training courses over the years. Her can-do attitude and positivity will be greatly missed but this is a wonderful opportunity for Stacey and there is no doubt she will be a great asset to NMAHP. From all of us at Medical Appraisal, we wish her every success in her new role.

We are delighted to welcome Pamela Curran to the team, who joins us from mid-August on a 12-month secondment taking up the role of Senior Officer to assist with the increased workload for 2022/2023. Pamela joins us from NHS Ayrshire & Arran where she was the appraisal administrator and her knowledge and experience will be invaluable to the team.