What they are
| Area | Capability | What it really means |
|---|---|---|
| Knowing yourself and relating to others | 1. Fitness to practise | Looking after your health, honesty and behaviour so patients can trust you; knowing when you, or a colleague, are not safe to work. |
| 2. An ethical approach | Being fair and respectful; handling consent, capacity, confidentiality and your own values well. | |
| 3. Communication and consultation | Finding out what the patient thinks and wants, explaining clearly and agreeing a plan, in any medium. | |
| Applying clinical knowledge and skill | 4. Data gathering and interpretation | Getting the right information from history, examination, records and tests, and making sense of it. |
| 5. Clinical examination and procedural skills | Examining and doing procedures competently, with consent and a chaperone where needed. | |
| 6. Decision-making and diagnosis | Reasoning to a working diagnosis, weighing risk, coping with uncertainty, using time wisely. | |
| 7. Clinical management | Safe, evidence-based plans: prescribing, referral, follow-up, safety-netting, emergencies. | |
| Managing complex and long-term care | 8. Medical complexity | Several conditions, medicines and priorities at once; frailty, polypharmacy, end of life. |
| 9. Team working | Working well with the practice team and other services; safe handover; sharing care. | |
| Working well in organisations and systems | 10. Performance, learning and teaching | Keeping up to date, learning from events and evidence, improving care, teaching others. |
| 11. Organisation, management and leadership | How the practice and the NHS run; managing workload and systems; leading change. | |
| Caring for the whole person and community | 12. Holistic practice, health promotion and safeguarding | The whole person in context; promoting health; protecting people at risk. |
| 13. Community health and environmental sustainability | Your local population and its inequalities; using resources fairly; the carbon cost of care. |
The 9 clinical experience groups
- Infants, children and young people (under 19)
- Gender, reproductive and sexual health (including women's, men's and LGBTQ+ health)
- Long-term conditions, including cancer, multimorbidity and disability
- Older adults, including frailty and end of life
- Mental health, including addiction, alcohol and substance misuse
- Urgent and unscheduled care
- People with health disadvantage and vulnerabilities
- Population health and health promotion
- Clinical problems not linked to a specific group (use sparingly)
Names are paraphrased; the RCGP wording differs slightly.
The numbers by year
| Requirement | ST1 | ST2 | ST3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Every capability evidenced in each review period | 13 of 13 per review | 13 of 13 per review | 13 of 13 per review |
| Clinical experience group coverage check current RCGP guidance | spread across all 9 | spread across all 9 | spread across all 9 |
| All 13 capabilities at licensing level by final ESR check current RCGP guidance | n/a | n/a | 13 of 13 at C or E |
Full time, per training year unless stated. Less than full time: per-year totals stay the same and each 6-month review needs a pro rata share; 6-monthly ESRs and 12-monthly certificates are not pro rata. Check with your deanery and educational supervisor.
Notes on these numbers
- Every capability evidenced in each review period, LTFT: Same rule per 6-month review period (not pro rata).
- Clinical experience group coverage, LTFT: Same expectation over the training year.
- Clinical experience group coverage, confidence: medium. Our sources were partly secondary for this item: check current RCGP guidance.
- All 13 capabilities at licensing level by final ESR, LTFT: Same.
- All 13 capabilities at licensing level by final ESR, confidence: medium. Our sources were partly secondary for this item: check current RCGP guidance.
The rules
- In every 6-month review period, at least one entry must address each of the 13 capabilities.
- Across each training year, aim to cover all 9 clinical experience groups.
- Link each entry to the few capabilities it genuinely shows (advice is usually no more than 3) and 1 or 2 groups, with a one-line reason for each capability. Treat the "3" as good practice rather than a hard RCGP rule.
- Your ES rates every capability at every ESR against the RCGP progression descriptors; at the final ESR all 13 must be Competent for licensing or Excellent.
How to link capabilities well
Fewer, justified links are stronger than many unexplained ones.
- Ask which capability the entry shows best and link that first.
- Add one or two more only if there is a specific reason.
- Write one sentence per link: "[Capability]: I [specific action] which shows [aspect]."
Example justification
Team working: I phoned the district nurse to arrange a same-day catheter review and agreed who would update the family, which shows safe sharing of care.
Keyword prompts
| If your entry is about... | Consider |
|---|---|
| Consent, capacity, confidentiality, DVLA, values | An ethical approach |
| Ideas, concerns, expectations, interpreter, telephone, bad news | Communication and consultation |
| Results, ECG, red flags, records | Data gathering and interpretation |
| Examination, procedure, chaperone | Clinical examination and procedural skills |
| Differential, uncertainty, urgency, anchoring | Decision-making and diagnosis |
| Prescribing, referral, safety-net, follow-up | Clinical management |
| Multimorbidity, polypharmacy, frailty, palliative | Medical complexity |
| Nurse, pharmacist, MDT, handover | Team working |
| Teaching, audit, QI, event analysis, feedback | Performance, learning and teaching |
| Duty session, workload, systems, meetings, protocols | Organisation, management and leadership |
| Safeguarding, social context, carer, lifestyle | Holistic practice, health promotion and safeguarding |
| Inequality, local population, carbon, inhalers, resources | Community health and environmental sustainability |
| Tiredness, error, complaint, own health, probity | Fitness to practise |
Free and private: everything stays in this browser. Do not enter patient-identifiable information.
The capabilities most often thin
- Fitness to practise: write about workload, a mistake, feedback you found hard, or a time you were unwell.
- Organisation, management and leadership: duty sessions, results handling, practice meetings, systems you used or improved.
- Community health and environmental sustainability: inequalities in your list, inhaler carbon footprint, social prescribing, the cost of care.
Do this now
Open the Coverage Map below (or your portfolio's capability view) and write down your three thinnest capabilities. Aim your next three logs at them, but only where a case genuinely shows them.
Common ARCP pitfalls
- The same 2 or 3 capabilities every time, leaving gaps your ES cannot rate.
- Six or eight links on one entry with no justification: it looks like box-ticking.
- Forcing a link the entry does not show. A false link is easy to spot and undermines the rest.
- Leaving the coverage check until the week before the ESR.