Continuing Professional Development
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is defined in the
General Medical Council’s Guidance on Continuing Professional
Development, April 2004 as
'A continuing learning process
that complements formal undergraduate and postgraduate education
and training. CPD requires doctors to maintain and improve their
standards across all areas of their practice. CPD should also
encourage and support specific changes in practice and career
development. It has a role to play in helping doctors to keep up to
date when they are not practicing'
CPD strategy
Who is it for?
What will be the included in a balanced
CPD portfolio?
What will be the minimum amount of CPD
that will be acceptable?
What will the RCGP Credit Based
System for CPD look like?
Quality assurance of the CPD
portfolio linked to appraisal and recertification
RCGP resources to support the
managed CPD scheme
CPD Initiatives
CPD strategy
The College is developing a national managed scheme for CPD for
all GPs through its Professional Development Board (PDB), with
patient need being central to the agenda. The principal aims of any
CPD scheme are to ensure that every general practitioner continues
to update and apply their clinical knowledge and skills, to promote
patient confidence that a GP’s knowledge is up to date and,
ultimately help to improve patient safety. CPD is, therefore,
integral to the GP appraisal process and the future recertification
system for GPs. We are working closely with organisations such as
COGPED, NAPCE, UKCEA and Postgraduate Deaneries and will be
consulting with faculties and other local interests, individual GPs
and CPD providers as the scheme develops.
The scheme will adhere to the
10 principles of good practice in CPD evolved by the Academy of
Medical Royal Colleges (AMRC).
The main principles of the RCGP CPD strategy are outlined in the
PDB Chair, Professor Nigel Sparrow’s, paper ‘Good
CPD for GPs’ which was endorsed by the RCGP Council on
16 June 2007. The information below outlines the development of the
RCGP CPD scheme to date, particularly referring to the nature and
extent of evidence of a GPs CPD that will be necessary for annual
appraisals and, in turn, for recertification of the GP on a five yearly
bases.
Who is it for?
The RCGP managed CPD scheme will be applicable to all four
countries of the UK, and appropriate for all practising GPs –
whatever their stage of career, RCGP membership status, work
setting, employment status, learning style, special interests - and
be generalisable to GMC registered doctors working outside the UK.
GPs taking career breaks will also benefit from following the
scheme. The RCGP managed CPD scheme will be available to members as
part of their membership package and at a reasonable cost for
non-members.
What will be the included in a balanced CPD
portfolio?
CPD requires doctors to maintain and improve their standards
across all areas of their practice, and encourages and supports
specific changes in practice and career development. It promotes
good medical practice and protects patients from bad practice. So
any CPD portfolio should describe the GP’s personal learning plan,
the learning undertaken with reflection on how the GP’s practice
has and evidence of how the GP has kept up to date with new and
changing information and the effect on practice.
What will be the minimum amount of CPD that will be
acceptable?
The extent and nature of a GP's CPD will be captured in a
portfolio of learning; a minimum of 50 credits from a learning
based credit systerm will be required per annum, with a broad range
of general practice being covered in 250 credits over a 5 year
cycle.
Educational activity should be planned in advance through a
personal development plan (PDP) focused on learning outcomes and
how learning will be applied to maintain and improve current
practice or career development. A paper 'Personal
Development Plan Guidance for Appraisers' which
provides guidance to appraisers how to advise their appraisees on
PDP construction was endorsed by the RCGP Council on 14th June
2008.
What will the RCGP Credit Based System
for CPD Look Like?
A paper
'RCGP Credit Based System for Continuing Professional Development
(CPD)' which proposes a structure for
the Credit Based System, explains how the scheme would work and the
role of the appraisers within it, was endorsed by the RCGP Council
on 14th June 2008.
CPD for GP's needs to be flexible due to the variety of general
practice and different working circumstances of GP's. It needs to
include new and changed knowledge; core activities; scope for
individual and local provision and a portfolio system to record
learning.
Quality assurance of the CPD portfolio linked to
appraisal and recertification
Quality assurance of CPD for GPs should be part of the
continuing spectrum of clinical governance – linking CPD with
health service delivery; linking recertification and relicensing.
Self- accreditation of relevant CPD activities and documented
reflective learning will be allowed and encouraged. The RCGP has
devised a CPD accreditation structure to match the blended learning
approach that accommodates GPs’ range of learning styles, as part
of the process of quality assurance. CPD accreditation will
define how and what personal learning, online learning, attendance
at conferences, workshops, plenary lectures by accredited education
providers and non-accredited providers, small group development
work, task based learning and work based learning will be
accredited.
A strategy paper ‘Principles of GP
Appraisal’, which sets out a policy and principles to
underpin the appraisal process for General Practitioners working in
the national health systems of the four countries of the UK,
was endorsed by the RCGP Council on 29th February
2008.
The RCGP is also devising quality assurance frameworks to apply
to:
- quality standards for appraisals
- quality standards for appraisers
- quality of a PDP: including components of completed learning
cycle – needs assessment; reflective learning; completion of
defined learning outcomes
- quality of learning: captured in a balanced needs based
portfolio of learning
- quality standards of educational provision.
RCGP resources to support the managed CPD
scheme
The RCGP Esential General Practice
Updates will be a key element of the RCGP's provision of a
managed CPD scheme. These are six monthly learning modules which
include new and changing knowledge relevant to general
practice. The first EGP Update, which consisted of twenty
items, was launched as a pilot online in May 2008. Each EGP
Update item is scenario based with a self assessment element
and is hyperlinked to the ofiginal source document. The link
to assess the EGP Update 1 programme is:
http://www.rcgp.org.uk/continuing_the_gp_journey/distance_learning/egp_update.aspx
The RCGP will develop an e-portfolio for established GPs as
well as those in training for GPs to be able to record learning
with defined and relevant outcomes of learning based on the GP
curriculum. Ultimately the portfolio will be based upon an
individual doctor’s nMRCGP e-portfolio providing a generic record
of learning and development across a GP’s career.
CPD initiatives
The Professional Development Board is currently in the process
of developing a range of initiatives to support CPD, these will
include :