CPD

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) activities should be very broadly defined and include personal, opportunistic and experiential learning as well as activities targeted at identifying ‘unknown unknowns’. Any learning activity where you spend time learning something and deciding how it can be put into practice in your current, or proposed, work can be counted as CPD.

This could include:

• courses
• podcasts
• webinars
• learning from cases, data, learning events and feedback
• personal reading and online research
• online modules
• professional conversations about clinical care, which can include ‘coffee room’ conversations about complex cases
• everyday learning from your work and the experiences of others.

It is best practice to have supporting information about a variety of types of learning. To remain up to date across the whole scope of your work you should demonstrate:

• targeted structured learning aimed at addressing identified learning needs or your ‘unknown unknowns’
• opportunistic experiential learning from cases, data, events and feedback.

It is important to include evidence of learning with others to calibrate professional judgements and support team learning.

The emphasis for CPD is on the quality of your reflection on what you have learned and the impact it has had on quality of care, not the quantity of credits or CPD documented. Your appraiser may not summarise total credits but rather whether you are doing sufficient and relevant CPD. In fact, it is impossible to put a number on the credits that you need to do to keep up-to-date and fit to practise. The GMC requires you to do enough CPD to keep up to date across your whole scope of practice but they do not attempt to define or require a quantity.

We recommend that those who have a restricted, or extended, scope of practice should discuss with their appraiser what constitutes sufficient CPD to keep up to date at what they do and to agree this with their RO if necessary.

For example, those who were historically GPs, but now have a very restricted role providing only family planning services, will follow the recommendations of the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health (FSRH) for their CPD, to demonstrate that they are fully up to date across the whole of their practice. However, GPs who wish to remain entitled to undertake undifferentiated primary care sessions need to keep up to date across the whole of the GP curriculum.

As a professional, you should determine what is enough CPD for you to be up-to-date and fit to practise across all of your work. You should discuss this with your appraiser and, when necessary, get explicit agreement from your responsible officer that what you are doing is appropriate for your circumstances.

You do not have to do the same amount of CPD every year. Your revalidation recommendation will be informed by a portfolio that will normally cover a five-year cycle. We recommend that you learn from a wide variety of sources and ensure that you always keep up to date as part of normal professional practice. This is the same whether you are working part-time or full-time. We recommend that part-time GPs, who have less experiential learning to draw on, need at least the same amount of CPD as full-time GPs.

Sometimes it is obvious that a major commitment, such as a postgraduate qualification, in one area of your scope of practice will take up almost all your CPD time in one year. It is important to ensure that your learning stretches across the GP curriculum over the five-year cycle if you are doing undifferentiated general practice.

Your appraiser can help you to recognise gaps and document your CPD appropriately. They can also help you to plan to ensure that your portfolio covers the whole of your scope of practice.

You should only expend time and energy in documenting a sample of your most relevant and important learning. Your documentation should not detract from your patient care, or family or leisure time.

If different organisations, in different parts of your scope of practice, have required training in common, such as Equality and Diversity training or Information Governance updates, an annual update in one organisation should be accepted by others. This avoids duplication which could take you away from clinical care. You should check with the organisations in which you work that your training will cover all your roles. Organisations should be prepared to accept equivalent learning and understand the importance of not taking doctors away from front line care.

Your appraisal portfolio may be a convenient place for you to record any organisational mandatory training, particularly for locums who may be required to supply certain documents to different employers.

Because of the importance of being able to demonstrate compliance with this training in meeting contractual, or performers list, obligations, it may be appropriate to upload your certificates of attendance as well as any reflective notes. However, the GMC has not set any requirements about exactly how CPD should be evidenced or recorded. Certificates of attendance may prove attendance at an event, but they are not proof of learning or development. They say nothing about what has been learned, or any changes you have made as a result.

Recording and demonstrating your CPD by scanning and storing certificates is not likely to be a good use of your time unless storing them in your appraisal portfolio or learning log helps you and enables you to avoid duplication of effort.