Common queries on Form 4 (summary document)
Appraisal Form 4 is drafted and edited by the appraiser (for quality assurance and avoidance of collusion), it summarises your appraisal discussions and acts as confirmation / proof of appraisal.
It records details of the appraisee's agreed actions and outcomes from the appraisal meeting, as well as their learning needs. Once the form has been signed off by both appraiser and appraisee, the agreed learning needs on this form become the appraisee's PDP for the year ahead.
After the appraisal meeting your appraiser will draft the Form 4. Once this is done, they will forward the form to you, via SOAR, for your review and sign off. Follow the link in the automated email, login to SOAR and you will be redirected straight to Form 4.
If for whatever reason you are unable to get to the page with the provided link in the automated email, simply login to SOAR as you normally would, go to the Dashboard, then click on "Approve Form 4" from the timeline.
For previous Form 4s, from the Dashboard page click on "Appraisal History", select the appraisal you need to review the Form 4 for, and click on the corresponding notepad icon to take you to the appraisal details page. Then, simply click on the "Form 4" tab along the top, and that will take you to your Form 4.
For quality assurance of appraisers, and avoidance of collusion purposes, only the appraiser can draft and edit the Form 4 summary.
If your appraiser forwards you the form and you wish to make changes (maybe the appraiser missed out certain issues that were discussed, or there's a typo etc), you need to reject the form first so that your appraiser can make the necessary changes. Form 4 is locked from further editing once it has been forwarded to an appraisee for clarity and reassurance that no changes are made when it is under review.
To do this, scroll to near the bottom of the Form 4 page where you should see a button near the bottom right that says "Change Request". Click on this, you will then be prompted to leave a message as to why you rejected this form. Detail the things you wish changed and when finished, click on "Request change". An automated email will be sent to the appraiser, along with your message.
Your appraiser may contact you again for clarification before making the necessary amendments and re-forwarding the form to you for review and sign off again.
To sign off the Form 4, scroll to near the bottom of the form where you will see two buttons, the "Change Request" button mentioned above, and next to it, the "Approve" button. Simply click on this, you will be prompted with an "Are you sure?" message, click OK, and that's the appraisal completed.
Once the process is completed, the system will send an automated email confirmation to the Appraisee, the Appraiser, and the Health Board Administration team.
If you do not see the approve button, it is likely you have recently moved health boards and you are trying to sign off an outstanding appraisal in the previous board. In this case please liaise with the SOAR helpdesk and relevant health board admin teams to grant you temporary access to sign this off.
The appraisees and their currently assigned appraiser have access to the Form 4 (including previous ones if available). Appraisal Leads also have access to them, but only for quality assurance purposes. Responsible Officers and their approved delegates (usually the Appraisal Leads) will also have access to the Appraisal Form 4s.
Local Administration teams have access to the Confirmation/Sign off section ONLY; they do not have access to the actual summary content itself.
If the appraisee is being revalidated this year, and the current appraisal is marked as "not on track" on the Form 4 - then they will be flagged for the Responsible Officers attention.
Please note that unless the appraisee fails to produce key supporting information at the appraisal meeting, we would expect most appraisees to be on-track for Revalidation; even then, so long as the appraisee is aware of what they need to provide prior to revalidation - they would be considered on-track.
"Issues" is flagged if the appraisee provided an answer on the declaration statements that required additional comments (pop up text box). It is flagged for the Appraiser's attention to ensure a discussion is had about this at the appraisal meeting and that Form 4 is documented accordingly.
"Issues" can be changed to "Resolved" by the appraiser. For example, appraisee might have stated in the Health Statement that they are not registered with a GP because they had just moved to the area; but they have since registered with a local GP surgery. In which case the appraiser can overwrite the "Issues" to "Resolved" in the Health declarations and document accordingly on Form 4.
"Issues" cannot be changed to "No Issues" unless the appraisee changes their declaration answers, which is not always appropriate depending on the circumstances.
Functionality-wise, "Resolved" and "No issues" are the same in that it doesn't get flagged for revalidation.
This function is only available to any unsigned/incomplete Form 4s. If there are any signed off Form 4s that require to be overwritten, please contact the helpdesk (SOAR@nes.scot.nhs.uk) with details (GMC number of appraisee, date of meeting) and we will action this behind the scenes.
Any items left as "issues" will be flagged for the RO's info when the time comes for the appraisee's revalidation (but it doesn't stop them from making a positive recommendation depending on the situation).
There are certain core elements within the domains that appraisers are asked to fill in a 0/1 scoring to help track an appraisee's revalidation progress.
"1" typically means something was discussed satisfactorily; "0" means either nothing was submitted or no discussion was had.
In a typical appraisal, it is expected that all the core elements will have a "1" scoring apart from MSF and PSQ, which is only required once every 5-year revalidation cycle.
Form 4 is often used as proof of appraisal for clinicians moving between health boards.
On SOAR, users can export their Form 4 into a PDF for completed appraisals:
If you only want to save the first page (with appraiser/appraisee/meeting details only), follow the above steps to download the full Form 4, then use your device's Print function to print selected pages into a new PDF.
This page was last updated on: 19/08/2024
