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Continual Professional Development

 
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Introduction

The HPC Standards

Renewing your Registration

The CPD Profile

If You are Chosen for Audit

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The first year of the HPC audit by Mark Potter -download presentation
Introduction

 

CPD Definition

The Health Professions Council (HPC) (click to go to HPC web-site) define 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’. In simple terms, CPD is the way health professionals continue to learn and develop to keep their skills and knowledge up to date and appropriate to their role as it changes over time,.ensuring they work safely, legally and effectively

CPD Linked to Registration

Before 2005, any CPD that you did was not linked to your registration with the HPC. Now that the HPC have agreed their standards of CPD (click to go to HPC standards), it has become an important part of your continuing registration. The HPC standards mean that all health professionals must continue to develop their knowledge and skills while they are registered. Continuing Professional Development for ALL registrants commenced on 1st July 2006.

 
The HPC Standards Say That Registrants Must:

 
 

1. Maintain a continuous, up-to-date and accurate record of their CPD activities;

               Your CPD record can be in whatever format is most convenient and you can decide which kinds of CPD are relevant to your role and your work. A suggested HPC template CPD record for Clinical Scientists is saved under the downloads section of this site (click to go to CPD template).

2. Demonstrate that their CPD activities are a mixture of learning activities relevant to current or future practice;

Your CPD must be a mixture of different kinds of activities – not just one kind of learning – examples of CPD activities are given on the HPC website (click to go to CPD activities). Your CPD must also be relevant to your work. It could be relevant to your current role or to a planned future role.

You may decide that you can meet HPC standards by taking part in a scheme run by your employer or your professional body eg RCPath (click to go to RCPath.org). The HPC standards give you the flexibility to plan your own CPD in a way that suits your work, your learning needs, your preferences, and the time and resources available to you. The standards take account of how you work, whether part-time or full-time, whether in the NHS or in private practice, whether dealing with patients or in management, education or research (or anywhere else). You just need to make sure that your CPD meets the HPC standards.

3. Seek to ensure that their CPD has contributed to the quality of their practice and service delivery;

You should aim for your CPD to improve the quality of your work. It may not actually improve your work, due to factors beyond your control, but when you choose your CPD activities you should intend for them to improve your work.

4. Seek to ensure that their CPD benefits the service user;

You should aim for your CPD to benefit service users. As above, you may not be able to make sure that this happens, but you should have the intention of benefiting service users. Depending on where and how you work, service users might include patients, referring clinicians, clients, your team, or students.

5. Present a written profile containing evidence of their CPD upon request.

If audited, you need to send a CPD profile to the HPC to show how you have met their standards. (click to go to CPD profile)

 
Renewing Your Registration

 

When renewing your registration, you need to sign to confirm that you have met the HPC standards for CPD. From 2008, each time a health profession renews its registration, the HPC will audit a random sample of health professionals to make sure their standards are being met. If you are audited, the HPC will write to you and ask you to send them information showing how your CPD over the last two years has met their standards. The HPC will send you a CPD profile (click to go to CPD profile) to fill in which will then be assessed by CPD assessors.
The CPD Profile

 

Sample profiles for Clinical Scientists (eg Biochemistry) are available on the HPC web-site (click to go to HPC sample profiles)

 When completing the profile (click to go to CPD profile), the registrant is required to include the following: 

 
  1. A summary of their work practice (maximum of 500 words)

This summary should help to show how your CPD activities are relevant to your current or future work.

Your summary should describe your role and the type of work you do. The summary should include your main responsibilities, identify the specialist areas you work in and identify the people you communicate and work with most.

It may be appropriate to base this part of your CPD profile on your job description. When you have written your statement about how you meet the HPC standards for CPD (see the following explanation), you may find it helpful to go back over your summary of work, to make sure that it clearly explains how your CPD activities are relevant to your future or current work.
  1. A personal statement identifying how you have met the HPC standards (maximum of 1500 words)

Your statement should clearly show how you believe you meet each of the HPC standards, and should refer to all the CPD activities you have undertaken and the evidence you are sending in to support your statement.

When you write your statement, the HPC expect you to concentrate most on how you meet standards 3 and 4 – how your CPD activities improve the quality of your work and the benefits to service users.

Below, the HPC have suggested how you might want to approach writing your statement by:

  1. Using your personal development plan (PDP) as a starting point

 Most PDPs involve identifying:

  • ·         learning needs;

  • ·         learning activities;

  • ·         types of evidence; and

  • ·         what you have learnt.

You could write a statement on how you have you updated your knowledge and skills over the last two years, and what learning needs you have met. You may find it helpful to identify three to six points that have contributed to the quality of your work.

These areas will have been identified through your PDP or a review of your role or performance. If you have a PDP, you can provide this as part of your evidence.

If you run your own private practice, and you have a business development plan or a similar document, then you may find this a useful starting point for writing your own statement.

OR

  1. Using the HPC standards

If you do not have a PDP, or if you would prefer to use another approach to write your statement, you could start with the HPC standards. Using the information the HPC have provided about their standards for CPD, write about how you have met each one. You could split your statement into sections, and dedicate each section to one of the standards.
  1. A Summary of supporting evidence

(evidence must be numbered, have a brief description & indicate related standard)

The evidence you send in will back up the statements you make in your CPD profile. It should show that you have undertaken the CPD activities you have referred to, and should also show how they have improved the quality of your work and benefited service users.
 Your evidence should include a summary of all your CPD activities. This will show that you meet standard 1.

Your evidence should also be able to show that your CPD activities are a mixture of learning activities and are relevant to your work (and therefore meet standard 2).

You do not need to send the HPC the full record of all your CPD activities. In fact, the HPC strongly encourage you not to do so. The HPC say that you may send them a summary of all your activities, but this should be only a sheet or two with a very brief list of activities and dates. The HPC have given a list of examples of evidence you can include  (click to go to CPD evidence).
If You Are Chosen For Audit

 
If you are chosen for audit, you need to look through your entire record of CPD activities and consider which activities best show how you have met  the HPC standards. This should be a mixture of activities that are directly linked to your current or future work, and you should consider how you can provide evidence that these activities have improved your work, and benefited service users. In all cases, evidence of how you have planned your CPD, what activities you have undertaken, and the effects that this had on how you work and the effects on your service users, will all be helpful to the assessors.

When you put together your profile, you also need to send in evidence to support your personal statement. See sample profiles available on the HPC site for reference (click to go to CPD sample profiles).

In your personal CPD record you may have a large amount of evidence relating to certain activities. However, you do not need to send the HPC all of this information. You need to decide which activities show how you meet the HPC standards, and then decide what evidence to send. You should refer to the assessment criteria - see HPC document : 'continuing professional development and your registration'  (PDF)in the related documents section on the registrants CPD page (click to go to CPD page) .

Make sure you have provided relevant supporting information to show how you meet each of the standards. The HPC do not have detailed guidelines on how much evidence you should send but you should bear in mind that the CPD assessors will need to see enough information to be sure that the CPD activity has taken place.

Finally your development is now formally recognised as an important part of being registered. This gives individual health professionals or organisations the opportunity to campaign for greater support and recognition of your CPD activities, from your employers and other organisations.

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