Supporting Experienced Appraisers - Careers and Mental Fitness

If you are an experienced appraiser, you have already done the work of getting here. You know how appraisal is supposed to work. You understand the frameworks, you have sat across from dozens of doctors, and you have helped many of them find more clarity and direction through that conversation.

But the system you are doing this in has changed. The doctors coming to you are under more pressure than ever. One in four took sick leave due to work-related stress in 2024. One in five trainers have reduced or stepped back from their role entirely. The appraisal conversation, when it is done well, is one of the few spaces in a doctor’s year where someone actually sits with them, listens properly, and helps them think.

That is a significant responsibility, and it does not sit lightly.
This workshop exists for experienced appraisers who want to do that job better. Not because they are doing it wrong, but because the conversations that matter most, around career direction, psychological wellbeing, and honest reflection, require a specific set of skills that rarely get named or practised after initial training.

Designed for doctors, by doctors, this is a rare opportunity to slow down, revisit what makes appraisal genuinely valuable, and sharpen the skills that make the difference between an appraisal that ticks a box and one that actually changes something for the person sitting opposite you.

Using real scenarios and structured practice, you will work alongside peers facing the same challenges, build on what you already know, and leave with tools you can use in your next appraisal.

To help experienced appraisers develop the advanced coaching and communication skills to hold more meaningful appraisal conversations, support appraisee wellbeing and career development, and protect their own mental fitness in a role that asks a great deal of them.

• Reconnect with the developmental purpose of appraisal and understand how to reframe it as something a doctor genuinely values rather than something they postpone under pressure.
• Apply advanced coaching and communication skills within the appraisal conversation, including active listening, powerful questioning, and structured frameworks such as T-GROW, to support deeper reflection and more honest dialogue.
• Support your appraisees in building Personal Development Plans that are meaningful, balanced, and genuinely connected to their scope of practice, career goals, and what matters to them.
• Hold career conversations with confidence, helping appraisees think clearly about where they want to be in one, three, and five years, and what they are prepared to change to get there.
• Recognise the signs of stress, burnout, and psychological difficulty in the doctors you appraise, and understand how to respond in a way that opens the conversation rather than closes it down.
• Apply evidence-based mental fitness strategies to your own professional life, understanding what sustains you, what depletes you, and what small, consistent changes compound into greater resilience over time.
• Leave with a clearer sense of what makes your appraisal practice distinctive, and the confidence to use it.