🎯 Curriculum Coverage: Capabilities & CEGs Explained

   

Your FourteenFish portfolio isn’t just a dumping ground for learning logs - it’s designed to demonstrate that you’re becoming a capable, safe, and competent GP.

One of the key ways it does this is by tracking your evidence against two things:

• ✅ The 13 Capabilities (the professional skills every GP needs)
• ✅ The 9 Clinical Experience Groups (the range of patient types and presentations you need to cover)

This article breaks down what these are, why they matter, and how to map them correctly in your portfolio.

        

🧠 What Are the 13 Capabilities?

These are the core skills and professional attributes that define what it means to be a GP. You’ll need to demonstrate them consistently across your training, with evidence gathered from clinical case reviews, CBDs, COTs, reflections, and more.

Here’s the full list:

1. Fitness to practise
2. Maintaining an ethical approach
3. Communication and consultation skills
4. Data gathering and interpretation
5. Clinical examination and procedural skills
6. Making a diagnosis/decision
7. Clinical management
8. Managing medical complexity
9. Working with colleagues and in teams
10. Maintaining performance, learning and teaching
11. Organisation, management and leadership
12. Practising holistically and promoting health and safeguarding
13. Community orientation

     

💡 Tip: Use the Capability Word Descriptors to Make Your Life Easier

When writing a piece of evidence and selecting a Capability, click “Show word descriptors” just below it. This reveals examples of what each capability looks like at four levels:

• Underperformance
• Needs further development
• Competent
• Excellent     

📌 Use the “Competent” or “Excellent” descriptors to guide your reflection.

Try to mirror their language and include key points in your justification section. For example, if you’re mapping “Working with colleagues and in teams,” and the descriptor talks about multidisciplinary care planning — reflect on how you worked with a district nurse, pharmacist, or social prescriber, and what that added to the care.

This does two things:

• ✅ Makes it easier for your supervisor to confirm you’ve hit the capability in your ESR
• ✅ Makes the writing process faster and clearer — you’ve got a ready-made framework to follow

     

🧑‍⚕️ What Are the 9 Clinical Experience Groups (CEGs)?

These reflect the types of patients and presentations you should encounter as a GP registrar. Each Clinical Case Review (CCR) or log entry should be linked to the most relevant group(s):

1. Infants, children and young people
2. Gender, reproductive and sexual health
3. People with long-term conditions (including cancer)
4. Older adults (including frailty and end-of-life care)
5. Mental health
6. Urgent and unscheduled care
7. People with health disadvantage or vulnerabilities
8. Population health and health promotion
9. Clinical problems not linked to a specific group -  for the cases that don’t clearly map to any CEG.       

             

🟢 How FourteenFish Tracks Your Progress

When you log into your portfolio homepage, you’ll see two diagrams filled with small white circles — one for Capabilities, and one for CEGs.

Each circle represents a piece of mapped evidence. As you link more CCRs, assessments, and reflections to the appropriate categories, those white circles turn green/grey.

The goal is to build up enough green circles across all 13 Capabilities and all 9 CEGs to demonstrate broad, well-rounded development.

This matters particularly at ESR time — if your mapping is weak or patchy, your supervisor may not be able to sign you off.

        

✍️ How to Map Log Entries Correctly

When you write a CCR (or log other evidence such as a CBD/COT/CEX), you’ll be asked to:

• ✅ Select 1–3 Capabilities the entry demonstrates
• ✅ Select 1–2 relevant CEGs

You don’t need to cover everything in one log — but across the year, you want a balanced spread.

Every CCR, CBD, COT, and log entry should be mapped to at least one Capability and one CEG. Try to do this as you go — don’t leave it all to the last minute before your ESR.

And remember:

• Quality beats quantity — your supervisor is looking for insight and relevance, not word count
• You don’t need to write 13 reflections for 13 capabilities — most entries can (and should) map to 2–3

         

🔑 Why This Matters

Your ESR (Educational Supervisor Review) relies on a clear, balanced spread of mapped evidence. The green circles help your supervisor — and the ARCP panel — see that you’ve covered all the core competencies and clinical experiences needed to progress.

So:

• ✅ Map every CCR and log entry to the right capabilities and CEGs
• ✅ Use the descriptors to guide your writing
• ✅ Aim for even coverage across your portfolio

Once you get into the rhythm, it’s easy. 

           

📎 Next Up:

Ready to write a Clinical Case Review?
Check out our full step-by-step guide:
📝 Clinical Case Reviews: What, How & How Many?