Review Periods - what are these, who creates them and which dates? – FourteenFish Help Centre

You may not be used to the term 'Review Period" from your previous Portfolio, but here we explain what these actually are, and why you will be using these on our system.

What are they?

A review period relates to the time between ESRs. The start date should be the first day after your last ESR (or first day of training) and the end date should be the date of the ESR.

Each Review Period will be denoted in a Trainee's Portfolio by a title showing their Stage of Training, followed by which Review Period they are in within that Stage of Training (for example ST1-1, ST1-2 and so on).

At the end of each Review Period an Educational Supervisor Review (ESR) will occur, and will need to be signed off by Trainee and Supervisor.

Who creates them?

The following users can add new review periods:

Deanery / Training programme administrators
Educational Supervisors
Trainees

When an ESR is signed off by a supervisor a new review period is created automatically (if one hasn't already been created). This will continue with the current supervisor. The supervisor should retain access even if the trainee is due to change post shortly afterwards as the trainee can change which supervisors can access their portfolio (providing they have been linked in posts by their training programme). My supervisor can't see my portfolio / Changing my supervisor

Overlapping review periods

The system will prevent creation of a review period that overlaps an existing review period and if there are incorrect review periods these should be corrected first by the supervisor or training programme.

Adding review periods in advance

The system will also prevent the addition of review periods more than 6 months in advance. This is to try and minimise confusion around multiple open review periods.

Can I get a Review Period reopened/unlocked?

Once an ESR is signed off it shouldn't then be reopened unless there are mitigating circumstances and only then with the authority of the Educational Supervisor and Training programme. If new information has been requested then this should be recorded in the next Review period. This is also the case after the final ESR before CCT when if further information is requested, this should be recorded in a short new review period that may then not then have an ESR.

Mop-up review periods

If you had what should be your final ESR, but still need to add some entries to your portfolio before your ARCP, you or your supervisor will need to open a new review period, creating a "mop-up review". There is no need to sign off this ESR - any entries created within the 'mop-up' review period and shared with the supervisor will be visible to your deanery and ARCP panel. Please note that all evidence needs to be added before your ARCP as your portfolio is signed off at that point. If there are items missing, then you will receive a non-standard ARCP outcome and will be asked to subsequently add the missing evidence to a mop-up review period.

Trainee gap in Training

If any Trainee is away from their training for a period of time, for example Sick leave or Maternity leave, they will have a Stage of training listed on the system for this, but no Review Period, as no ESR is required. This will be created by your Deanery Admin Team or Patch/Programme Office.

Review Period End Date

Review periods should end on the date of the ESR. The concept is, the trainee gathers evidence over a period of time, culminating in a review of that evidence, 'the ESR'. Once this is signed off, all the evidence that was used for the ESR, is locked and archived (viewable still in All Entries). A new review period should then start the next day where everything will have reset for the next review period. This helps the trainee and the ES know where they are with regards to development in that review period.

Review Period end date in the future

If the end date of the ESR is in the future then it will stop the ES seeing the portfolio on their main page. This is easily fixed by the ES clicking on 'Go to Supervisors Area' from the Dashboard. This will then show them all the trainees. They can then click on the one they need to. There will be a pink banner at the top that will help them to fix the dates. If required, a new review period should also be created to start the day after the last ESR.