Faculty Development

The importance of preparation

Skilful appraisal doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There are many elements that contribute to a successful appraisal discussion and most will benefit from preparation in advance. Let us look at five aspects of preparation:

• information
• examples and evidence
• the appraisee’s reflective tasks
• the physical environment
• the interpersonal environment.

Information

To review something effectively it helps to be clear what you are reviewing it against. We have seen above that the content of appraisal is based around the headings in Good Medical Practice (GMC, 2001), which gives a framework to the appraisal and helps to provide information for revalidation. In addition, each individual works within an organisation, or in the case of joint academic and clinical appraisal, in more than one. Performance reviews often take place at the same time as appraisal, using the same evidence and process to achieve multiple goals. 

See Assessing educational needs for examples and more descriptions of revalidation, CPD, significant incident analysis and personal development plans.

The organisational or cultural context provides another set of pre-defined criteria that can be used as the basis for reviewing individual performance? These include the job description: a document ‘dog-eared through use’ as Armstrong (1999) described his ideal vision of these. The job description sets out the purpose of the job, the core tasks and duties, and the level of responsibility, authority and initiative expected. This is a key document that both manager and job holder should review prior to, and also quite possibly during, the appraisal discussion. It is the fundamental basis of what is required and expected of the role, and therefore of the job (or role) holder. Alongside the job description there may be a competency profile focusing on the behavioural aspects of job performance – properly used, competencies provide a very strong basis for discussing job performance. Linking the role to the current work period there will often be a set of individual work objectives. One useful way of regarding objectives is as the dynamic link between the job description and the current and ongoing work of the team. If there are objectives in place, then reviewing performance against these and planning new or amended objectives will be a major part of the appraisal discussion.