Continuing Professional Development
Continuing Professional Development (sometimes called Continuing Personal or Performance Development) is a obligation for healthcare professionals, lawyers and certain other professions as evidence of a commitment to maintaining standards and keeping up-to-date with current policies, practice and skills.
Whilst CPD may not be an obligation for informal First Aiders, Instructors or many other professions, the rationale behind CPD is certainly still valid so what is it and how do we do it?
What is Continuing Professional Development?
CPD is the means by which we maintain, improve and broaden our knowledge and skills and develop the personal qualities required in our professional lives. It is both a practice of doing and of recording.
Paramedics, for example, must maintain and submit their portfolio of evidence to the Health & Care Professionals Council. Non-professional health care providers such as First Aiders, Rescuers, Community Responders and EMTs, for example, are not obliged to do this but a record can and should be kept.
If I don't have to do it, why should I?
You probably already are - CPD is sometimes a deliberate action, such as attending a course or gaining further training, but it is also done less obviously by reviewing a recent event or reading an article in your spare time.
As well as CPD benefiting your professional capabilities it also serves as leverage when going for promotion or negotiating pay and benefits. At the other end of the scale CPD can also serve as valuable evidence when your actions are called to account.
Without recording evidence of your CPD how will you demonstrate your increased skills or that your capabilities are current and in-line with best practice?
What constitutes CPD?
Work Based Learning
Peer review
Analyzing recent events
Awareness of Case Studies
Coaching from others
Discussion with colleagues
Project work or project management
Reflective practice
Secondments or job rotation
Supervising others
Visiting other departments or organisations
Shadowing others
Professional Activity
Being a Trainer, Teacher, Examiner or Assessor
Being an Expert Witness
Being promoted
Giving presentations or talks
Involvement in your professional body
Maintaining or developing specialist skills
Membership of a special interest group
Mentoring or coaching
Research
Formal / Educational
Attending conferences and seminars
Further Education
Distance Learning
Undertaking research
Writing for books, journals or web content
Self Directed Learning
Keeping a file of your progress
Reading articles / journals
Reviewing books / journals
Voluntary work
As well as this step-wise approach to CPD, the Chartered Institute for Professional Development state CPD should:
be continuous - professionals should always be looking for ways to improve performance
be the responsibility of the individual learner to own and manage
be driven by the learning needs and development of the individual
be evaluative rather than descriptive of what has taken place
be an essential component of professional and personal life, never an optional extra
How to plan for CPD
Your CPD file should show where you are now, where you want to go (short and long term) and how you will go about it.
Things to consider might be:
Opening statement - brief history
SWOT analysis - Strengths / Weaknesses / Opportunities / Threats
Goals
Skills
Qualifications
A Timetable of what you have achieved so far
Evidence - certificates of training, certificates of attendance, photocopies of articles etc.
Development Needs
Further Reading: What to do after First Aid at Work?