The NMC revalidation checklist: all eight requirements in one place

Revalidation comes round every three years, and if you only look at it a few weeks before your renewal date it can feel like a scramble. The good news is that the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) sets out exactly what you need, and there are only eight requirements. This post gathers them all into one checklist so you can see the whole picture, then explains the parts that people find hardest, which are almost always the reflective ones.

Everything below applies to nurses, midwives and nursing associates on the NMC register.

The eight requirements at a glance

To revalidate, you need to meet all eight of the following over the three years before your renewal date:

1. 450 practice hours (or 900 hours if you are renewing as both a nurse and a midwife, or hold another dual registration).
2. 35 hours of continuing professional development (CPD), of which at least 20 hours must be participatory.
3. Five pieces of practice-related feedback.
4. Five written reflective accounts.
5. A reflective discussion with another NMC-registered nurse, midwife or nursing associate.
6. A health and character declaration.
7. A professional indemnity arrangement.
8. Confirmation from an appropriate person that you have met the requirements.

That is the entire list. Everything else is detail about how to record each one. Below is what each requirement actually involves.

Practice hours

You need to have practised for at least 450 hours over the three years. If you are registered as both a nurse and a midwife, or hold another dual registration, the figure is 900 hours. Practice does not only mean hands-on clinical care. Time spent in management, education, research or advisory roles counts, as long as you are relying on your registration. Keep a simple record of your dates, the setting, your scope of practice and the number of hours.

CPD hours

You need 35 hours of CPD across the three years, and at least 20 of those hours must be participatory. Participatory learning is anything that involves interaction with other people, such as a study day, a training course, a supervision session, a journal club or a team teaching session. Individual learning, such as reading an article or watching a webinar on your own, still counts towards the 35, but not towards the 20 participatory hours. Record the method, the topic, the number of hours, and a short note on the link to the Code.

Practice-related feedback

You need to collect five pieces of practice-related feedback over the three years. Feedback is deliberately broad. It can come from patients, service users, carers, colleagues, students or managers, and it can be written or spoken, formal or informal. A thank-you card, a comment in a supervision session, an audit result or a piece of team feedback all qualify. You do not submit the feedback itself. You use it, which brings us to the part most people find hardest.

The five written reflective accounts

You must write five reflective accounts and record them on the official NMC reflective accounts form. Each account can be about a piece of CPD, a piece of practice-related feedback, or an event or experience in your practice. Crucially, the NMC is clear that these accounts do not need to be lengthy or written in an academic style. You simply note down what you learnt, how it changed or improved your practice, and how it relates to the Code.

The two things that trip people up are anonymity and depth. Never include anything that could identify a patient or colleague, so no names, no dates that pin down an event, and no record numbers. And make sure you are reflecting, not just describing. A description says what happened. A reflection says what you learnt and what you did differently as a result.

A community nurse chose a difficult conversation with the family of a patient nearing the end of life. Rather than writing a blow-by-blow account, she noted that she had realised mid-conversation that she was doing most of the talking. She learnt to pause and check understanding more often, changed how she opens these conversations, and linked it to the Code theme of prioritising people. Three short paragraphs, fully anonymised, and it counts.

The reflective discussion

Once your five accounts are written, you have a reflective discussion about them with another nurse, midwife or nursing associate on the NMC register. This can be a colleague you work with regularly, but you choose who it is. You both complete and sign the reflective discussion form, which records that the conversation happened and the initials of the person you spoke with. You do not have to reveal any patient-identifiable information during the discussion, and your reflective accounts should already be anonymised.

Health and character, and indemnity

Two of the eight are short declarations. For health and character, you confirm your position and declare anything relevant, such as a criminal charge, conviction, caution or conditional discharge. For professional indemnity, you declare that you have, or will have when practising, an appropriate indemnity arrangement in place. For most employed nurses this is provided through their employer, and many others hold it through a professional body or union.

Confirmation

Finally, an appropriate confirmer signs to say you have demonstrated that you meet the requirements. In most cases this is your line manager, and ideally someone who is themselves on a professional register, though the NMC allows flexibility where that is not possible. Your confirmer needs to have seen your practice-hours and CPD records, your five reflective accounts, your feedback log, and your signed reflective discussion form. Give them everything in good time rather than on the day.

A sensible order to work through it

Feedback and reflection accumulate best over time, not in a rush. A workable approach is to log practice hours and CPD as you go, save pieces of feedback whenever they arrive, and write a reflective account every few months rather than five in one sitting. Leave the discussion, the declarations and confirmation for the final stretch, when everything else is in place.

If the reflective accounts are the part that stalls you, that is normal, and it is exactly the part Reflectory is built for. It interviews you about a real event, one question at a time, and produces a reflective account in your own words, with identifying details screened out and an AI-assistance note included. You stay the author. Your first reflection is free, so you can see whether it helps before your renewal date.