Peer review

As part of being a healthcare professional, our registrants must also work with their peers to share their experiences and think about how they might do things differently in the future.

Peer review

Peer reviews are an opportunity to meet with other registrants to discuss experiences in practice and exchange ideas about different ways of handling them. We know that our registrants have a lot of good practice to share and peer review is there to help them learn from each other. 

They may choose to participate in a peer review activity organised and led by a GOC-approved CPD provider (provider-led peer review) or a peer review activity organised and run by themselves (registrant-led peer review).

Who counts as a peer? 

Both optometrists and dispensing opticians count as peers of each other for the purposes of peer review.  

For registrants with a specialty, peer review must be undertaken with a registrant holding the same specialty. The exception is contact lens opticians who can conduct their peer review with optometrists.  

Registrant-led peer review

If registrants choose to organise and run their own peer review group, they should decide upon a topic or theme for discussion and which domain(s) is relevant to the topic or theme (up to a maximum of two core domains, or two core domains and a specialty domain). Registrants should inform their peers who will be attending of this information, so that they can prepare appropriate material to discuss. Registrants should ensure there is sufficient time for a meaningful discussion to take place, and for everyone to contribute and reflect.

When discussing cases involving patients, registrants must not share confidential or identifying patient information, such as names, addresses and dates of birth.

Provider-led peer review

In this peer review, cases or topics will be provided and learning outcomes set in advance by a GOC CPD provider. Such events can involve a large number of attendees, with delegates split into small discussion groups plus a facilitator. If registrants are unsure whether a provider-led activity is a peer review, we would encourage them to check the advertising materials or ask the CPD provider whether it is.

Reflection statements for peer review events

Regardless of which of the above types of peer review event they have completed, registrants must complete an anonymised reflection statement within their MyCPD account after the event. 

For a reflection statement, registrants might wish to consider what their expectations were for the peer review, what they learnt, whether they will be applying the learning to their practice (and why), and if so, how.