NES Medical Appraisal Annual Report 2022-2023

What is SOAR?

Scottish Online Appraisal & Revalidation (SOAR) is the national IT system used by medics working in NHS Scotland for managing their appraisal processes. SOAR plays an integral role in Scottish government’s common pathway approach to medical appraisal and revalidation; and is developed and maintained by NES in collaboration with health board teams.

Supporting SOAR Users

Last year we had resolved 6127 tickets on the JIRA Helpdesk and of these, the data shows that 48% of which came from secondary care users and 32% from primary care. A considerable difference between primary and secondary care users requiring assistance from the helpdesk. Other users who got in touch included trainees, admin teams, clinical development fellows, Directors of Medical Education (DMEs) and others.

When analysing the ‘Query type’ data it was found that the highest number of queries were still around MSF (42%). This was followed by log in queries which were substantially lower at 25%. The other query types that logged a considerable number of tickets were related to incorrect details which needed updating (remains the same as last year at 12%) and appraisal form queries (submission, uploading, Form 4 etc) tallied at 7%. Other ticket types that were logged with far lower numbers included trainee queries, Continuing Professional Development (CPD) log/ Personal Development Plan (PDP), performance issues, PSQ and RoT log queries. This data provided the central SOAR team with a detailed insight into the most common query types and indeed how we can continue to improve our service to accommodate all users.

A graphic showing developers building an interface.

We will continue to support our users via the helpdesk, accessed either via the website directly or via email to: SOAR@nes.scot.nhs.uk.

SOAR helpdesk outage

In April 2022 there was an unexpected and extremely rare SOAR Helpdesk outage for the duration of 1 week. During this time, the Medical Appraisal team had no access to the SOAR Helpdesk to view or resolve any SOAR Help Desk ticket queries.

A workaround was created to mitigate the system downtime, by constructing a temporary helpdesk solution via MS Forms. The Microsoft application form enabled users to contact us and send their SOAR system issues for us to action. This temporary process, in conjunction with logging all their details on Excel, meant that we could keep an accurate record and resolve all queries in a timely manner.

The solution was successful and functioned well, within a situation that was out with our control.

SOAR development

There has been very little development on SOAR in the past year as staff remain under pressure to prioritise various post-COVID related projects. However…

SOAR Options Review

Following feedback from national stakeholders, the Scottish Government commissioned a review of SOAR to understand what is currently working well and identify what needs to be improved or changed to meet user needs now and into the future.

The focus of this review (conducted by external partners, not NES) was on medical appraisal and how well SOAR supports this.

All SOAR users were invited to contribute via an online survey which ran from late July until the end of September. Survey respondents were invited to volunteer for focus-group workshops to help our external provider understand how SOAR is currently used and how it could be improved.

Groups of users were then invited to participate in several SOAR User Engagement workshops held throughout September. Each workshop brought users of the same type together such as Appraisees, Appraisers, Administrators etc, and enabled the discussion to focus on their experience using SOAR in their role.

A report of recommendations was presented to the RDBS in November 2022. The group then commissioned our external partners to develop an initial wireframe to visualise the proposed changes to the SOAR user interface, focusing on the Appraisee user experience. This was completed in March 2023 and discussions regarding next steps and development resources are ongoing.

Continued Review of MSF Options

SOAR continues the provision of MSF via our 3rd party provider, WASP Software. Following review of SOAR helpdesk trends, a discussion was held with WASP to improve the service which has resulted in its further development scheduled for the first quarter of 2023/24. Once updated, users will no longer have to contact the helpdesk for assistance with repeating their MSF.

Future projects

Depending on the outcome from the SOAR Options Review, we hope to further develop SOAR (in conjunction with the publication of the new GMC Good Medical Practice) to improve the functionality for both the team and users to ultimately make the system more user friendly.

SOAR Update