Celebrating International Nurses Day and the Power of Revalidation

An article to mark Monday 12 May 2025 by Claire Dyson, our Head of Professional Clinical Standards.

Revalidation is the process which all nurses and midwives in the UK, and nursing associates in England, need to follow to maintain their registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). It is a requirement that all registered practitioners need to complete every three years.

Within NHS Supply Chain, we currently have 47 registered nurses, on multiple parts of the register (adult, paediatrics and mental health). Revalidating allows us to be clinically credible when engaging with internal colleagues and external stakeholders, alongside making it possible for us to engage in patient facing roles to keep our clinical practice skills up to date.

The theme for this year’s International Nurses Day 2025 (IND) is “Our Nurses. Our Future. Caring for nurses strengthens economies”.

The upcoming IND report, due for publication on 12 May 2025, focusses on tangible, evidence-based solutions to enhance nurses’ health and wellbeing, recognising their crucial role in optimising both health systems and economies. It will address key concerns such as mental health, physical wellness and workplace safety, offering actionable strategies to support nurses in these critical areas.

See our Useful Links section for a link to the IND 2025 Report.

It’s important that we recognise our clinical workforce here at NHS Supply Chain and understand how we can support them, by being a supportive and positive work environment which fosters high-performing cultures. This includes understanding and supporting our nurses and midwives with their revalidation.

Contrary to popular belief, NMC revalidation is very straightforward. The practitioner needs to meet a range of revalidation requirements to show that they are keeping their skills and knowledge up to date and maintaining safe and effective practice. These are as follows.

• 450 practice hours, or 900 hours if renewing two registrations (for example, as both a nurse and midwife). Hours can be included if you are employed as a nurse, midwife, or nursing associate in a role that utilises your professional skills, they do not need to be in a clinical setting.
• 35 hours of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) including 20 hours of participatory learning.
• Five pieces of practice-related feedback. This feedback can be formal or informal and from anyone that person has come into contact within a professional manner and must relate to their role.
• Five written reflective accounts. The reflections can be about an instance of CPD, feedback, or an event or experience from their work as a nurse, midwife, or nursing associate. These reflections need to include key learning and insights on practice development.
• Reflective discussion. A discussion about each of the five reflective accounts must take place with another NMC registered practitioner. In most cases this will be with your line manager, but where this person is not on the register, you may undertake this with a registered colleague.
• Professional indemnity arrangement. If the person is employed, professional indemnity arrangement is usually supplied by the employer. If not, the person must have their own indemnity arrangement in place.
• Health and character declaration. This ensures the person is physically fit enough to practice, have not been charged or convicted of any criminal offense, issued with a formal caution, or had any adverse determination that their fitness to practice is impaired.
• Confirmation. This is usually undertaken by the person’s line manager. The ‘confirmer’ is required to look at the evidence that has been collected and ‘confirms’ that the person has met the NMC’s revalidation requirements.

All of the evidence must be completed on the templates provided by the NMC, uploaded and submitted electronically via their website.

For clinical colleagues, it is important that we are clear about the practice hours requirement. This is a self-assessment of practice hours, so our clinicians should make sure this reflects their current scope of practice, they do not have to be related to what the person was originally doing when they first joined the register.

The hours that count towards this requirement are those in which a person relies on their skills, clinical knowledge and experience as a registered nurse, midwife or nursing associate. This may include providing direct care to patients but can also include managing teams, teaching others, research, policy, clinical decision making, critical thinking, clinical engagement and conversation and helping to shape or run a care service.

Revalidation is about promoting good practice, it is important to note that it doesn’t make an assessment or focus on a person’s fitness to practice. The process helps to encourage a culture of sharing, reflection and improvement because it encourages reflection on the persons role of ‘The Code – Professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses, midwives and nursing associates’ in their practice and demonstrate that they are ‘living’ the standards set out within it.

Revalidation ensures high professional standards are being upheld and introduces standards of education, training and performance, so that practitioners maintain their ability and skill to deliver novel healthcare consistently throughout their careers.