NMC revalidation verification: what happens if you are selected

If you are due to revalidate, there is a chance the NMC will ask you to show your working. It is called verification, and for most nurses, midwives and nursing associates it arrives as a surprise. Here is what it is, what the NMC actually asks for, and the part that catches people out: your five written reflective accounts are not what it wants to see.

What verification actually is

Each year the NMC selects a sample of revalidation applications and asks for further information about the evidence behind them. The NMC is unusually plain about why. Its guidance says verification "is not designed to catch you out", and that if you are selected "this does not mean there are any concerns about your application".

Selection is random. It is not triggered by your employer, your practice history, or anything you wrote.

How you find out, and how long you have

• The NMC notifies you within 24 hours of submitting your application. Check your junk folder, because that email is easy to miss.
• You then have 21 days to complete an online form in your NMC Online account.
• You do not post your portfolio or upload documents. It is a form.
• The NMC may come back for further evidence in some cases, so keep everything until the process closes.

What the NMC actually asks you for

Verification works through the requirements one at a time.

Practice hours. You start with your most recent practice and work backwards through the three year period until you have covered the minimum, which is 450 hours, or 900 hours if you revalidate as both a nurse and a midwife, or as a nursing associate and a nurse. For each period you give the dates, the number of hours, the name, address and postcode of the organisation, your scope of practice and work setting, a description of the work you did, and, if you practised overseas, whether you were registered with the appropriate regulator there.

Continuing professional development. You give a breakdown covering your 35 hours, including the 20 participatory hours. For each activity the NMC wants the method, a brief description of the topic and how it relates to your practice, the dates, the hours and participatory hours, and the part of the Code most relevant to it.

That last item is the one almost nobody has written down. If your CPD log is a list of course titles and dates, you will be reconstructing all of this from memory against a 21 day clock. An entry that already carries the five fields takes minutes instead:

Online module on recognising deterioration in adults, followed by a case discussion with a practice educator, across one week in March. Four hours in total, of which two were participatory. Relevant to my practice because I work on an acute medical ward and I am often the first person to notice a patient changing. The part of the Code most relevant is preserve safety.

Professional indemnity. You confirm you have appropriate cover for your individual scope of practice, and you may be asked to justify the decisions you made about that cover. If you currently practise in more than one setting, you describe your main setting first, then the others.

Health and character. Nothing further is needed unless you have declared a police charge, caution, conviction or conditional discharge, or a determination by another regulatory body. If you have, the NMC contacts you separately about it, and you still complete the verification form.

Reflective discussion and confirmation. You do not upload the signed forms. You keep them.

The part that surprises people: your reflective accounts stay with you

The NMC's revalidation guidance is direct about this:

"You are not required to submit your reflective accounts form, reflective discussion form and confirmation form to the NMC at any point in the revalidation application. There is no requirement to store them electronically or upload them into NMC Online as part of your application, or provide them if you are selected so we can verify your evidence."

So the five written accounts you worked on are not read by the NMC, even at verification. That is deliberate. Those accounts describe real events and real people, and moving them to a regulator would shift confidential information around for no benefit.

Two things follow, and they pull in opposite directions.

1. Nobody at the NMC is marking your prose. Verification will not fail because a reflection read awkwardly.
2. The accounts still have to exist, still have to be properly anonymised, and still have to be discussed, because the discussion and the confirmation are exactly what gets checked.

What verification tests is that the process genuinely happened. The NMC contacts your confirmer, may contact your reflective discussion partner, and always checks that the details you gave about your discussion partner are consistent with the register.

Who else gets contacted

• Your confirmer, by email, at the address you supplied. If they do not respond within two weeks the NMC sends a reminder and asks you to chase them directly. If there is still no response, you may be asked to hold the confirmation discussion again with a different confirmer.
• Your employer, who may be contacted to verify the practice hours you declared.
• Your reflective discussion partner, who may be asked about the discussion.

The practical lesson is small and boring: give accurate contact details, and warn your confirmer that this might land in their inbox. The NMC says plainly that a confirmer who does not respond may put your registration at risk.

Your registration does not lapse while this runs

Read that twice if you are anxious. The NMC holds your registration effective until verification is complete, even if the process runs past your renewal date, and you continue to practise as normal throughout. Verification is completed within three months of your renewal date, and in most cases much sooner.

The exception is disengagement. If you do not take part at all, your registration could lapse and you would have to apply for readmission.

Where it can go wrong, and where you can appeal

The NMC sets out four situations in which it could refuse renewal at verification:

1. You provided the information, but it does not show you met the requirements. You have a right to appeal.
2. You provided the information, but it is not sufficient for the NMC to decide either way. You have a right to appeal.
3. You provided none of the information requested. You do not have a right to appeal.
4. The NMC cannot contact your confirmer, including after you supply another one. You have a right to appeal.

Scale is worth holding on to here. Between April 2024 and March 2025 the NMC selected 2,213 people for verification, and 2,181 of them went on to revalidate successfully. Just over 240,000 people revalidated in that same year.

If you are selected and it worries you, your union or professional body will usually help you work through the form. That is what their advice lines exist for, and calling early is a great deal easier than calling late.

The habit that makes verification painless

Every field verification asks for is something you knew on the day and will have forgotten in eighteen months: the dates, the hours, the participatory split, the topic, why it mattered to your practice, and which part of the Code it touched.

Record it when you do it, not when you are asked for it. That single habit turns verification from a fortnight of archaeology into an afternoon of copying.

Reflectory interviews you about your practice and produces a reflective account in your own words, with identifiable details screened out and an AI-assistance disclosure built into the document. It will not keep your CPD log for you, but it does mean your five accounts are written, anonymised and sitting ready long before anyone asks how the process went. You can see how it works at reflectory.co.uk.