Continued Professional Development

In the UK the Allied Health Professions Project 'Demonstrating competence through CPD' defines Continued Professional Development (CPD) as:

‘a range of learning activities through which health professionals maintain and develop throughout their career to ensure that they retain their capacity to practice safely, effectively and legally within their evolving scope of practice.

Why CPD?

Regularly participating in CPD activities allows us to continue to learn and develop throughout our careers. Our skills and knowledge must be kept up to date to ensure that we are able to work safely, legally and effectively. This is essential in order to maintain high levels of competence within our scope of practice and to enable us to competently expand our scope of practice. By doing this we will benefit ourselves, our service and our service user. It is also important for many health professionals continuing professional registration.

What is CPD?

CPD is the participation in a range of learning activities that are relevant to current or future practice. It is a continually reflective process that encourages you to learn from your experiences and implement this learning in your practice. CPD experiences should be evidenced and recorded in a professional portfolio which can then be used to share with others or be drawn upon to produce other documents such as a CV, profile or statement.

The CPD Process

CPD can consist of planned events such as a course or it can occur as unplanned work based learning experiences such as a critical incident. As a planned event it will involve the identification of learning needs, the setting of learning outcomes and the making of an action plan to achieve these. Unplanned experiences will occur naturally during your practice. Where these incidents lead to reflection and learning then they can also be considered as a valuable part of your CPD.

In both cases the use of a portfolio to record the experience will encourage your reflection and learning as well as building evidence to support your professional development. Any new learning should then be incorporated into your practice which will lead to another learning experience and so the process continues.

CPD Activities

Examples of learning activities that could be considered for your CPD can be seen here.

CPD Evidence

Examples of evidence that can be used to support your CPD can be seen here.