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Section 1: Employment History

Section 2: Documents & Certificates

Section 3: Academic Achievements

Section 4: Career Development

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Significant events are known by many names (i.e. Significant Incidents, Serious Incidents, Serious Untoward Incidents, or Serious Incident Requiring Investigation) but are essentially any unintended or unexpected event, which could or did lead to harm to one or more patients.

You may notice your own error, be informed by a colleague of an error you have made or be contacted by the Trust regarding a datix you have been named in.

If it is not already done, then you should ensure that any error you make or come across has been datixed so that the Trust can share learning and prevent similar incidents from happening again.

Don't be scared if you are named in an SI but speak to your supervisor or line manager about what steps you need to take. This will usually involve self-reflection that is recorded in your ARCP (Form R) or the Significant Events section of your appraisal (section 9).

No, the Serious Incident investigation process is for learning only, and not to apportion blame. The goal of the investigation is to identify contributing factors and root causes, and to agree actions that can be implemented to prevent similar incidents from occurring again. However, it is true that in rare circumstances individuals are referred for investigation if the investigation uncovers evidence of an individual:

No, they do not.

The GMC lists 6 domains where a doctor's fitness to practice may be impaired and these can go on your GMC record. The one that most closely relates to involvement in a significant event comes under dishonesty - where you do not disclose relevant information to the GMC. Therefore, you may get into trouble for NOT disclosing a significant event, but not for making a clinical error in the first place (unless it was due to being drunk or high…).

We recently saw this question from a junior doctor:

This doctor has already done all of the right things:

The work they have already done can now easily be uploaded to their appraisal document as evidence of involvement and learning from a significant event. Recognizing that none of us are infallible and showing that we can learn from our errors is important.

The key thing to remember here is that the GMC is not looking to punish you, and would much rather that you over-declare mistakes than appear to hide them. You will never be chastised for over-declaring something as an incident, but if you appear to be hiding it then there could be serious ramifications.

Keep a brief written record of the significant incident and a written reflection on your involvement and any changes you plan to make as a result of the incident. Include information about how you ensured patient safety, who you reported the incident to, and what their advice was. Make sure that your record is confidential and doesn’t include any identifiable patient information.

If you have any email contact from your supervisor or the Trust about the incident then keep these records too, particularly anything detailing how the incident was resolved. Keeping all of your documents about each incident in your portfolio is:

If you leave a Trust and lose access to your Trust email, having the documentation saved to a separate portfolio can ensure that you don’t suffer unnecessary stress down the line.

The GMC states that you must declare and reflect on every significant event or serious incident you were involved in at each appraisal. The purpose of this is to encourage you to reflect on your involvement in or contribution to serious incidents or events with the goal of learning from mistakes to improve your professional work.

Your MAG form has a specific section (section 9) for declaring all significant events.