Ensuring your CPD is effective and relevant

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

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

(Standards of continuing professional development)

Choosing a mixture of activities

In practice, most registrants will carry out many different types of learning while registered with us. Your CPD activities might be work-based, professional, formal or self-directed.

Any activity you learn or develop professionally from can be eligible for CPD, though you should make sure it complements your practice and enhances the service you provide.

There is developing evidence suggesting the most effective learning activities are interactive and encourage self-reflection, and we encourage you to look for opportunities to learn and reflect on your practice with others.

See more examples of CPD activities

CPD is individual to you

You should make your own decisions about the CPD that is most beneficial to you, your practice and your career. For example:

• Your CPD might help you prepare for a future role, supporting your career development.
• If you lead a team, some of your CPD might be developing your skills as a manager.
• If you work in private practice, your CPD might include working on the skills you need to run your practice successfully.
• If you have an annotation on the HCPC Register – such as in prescribing – we encourage you to consider CPD activities to keep up to date in that area of practice.

Quality of your practice and service delivery

If you are audited, we would ask you to tell us about some of the activities you have carried out, what you learnt and how this has improved your practice.

Your CPD should lead to you making changes to how you work which improves the service that you provide.

You do not necessarily have to make drastic changes to how you work. Some CPD
activities might mean that you continue to work as you did before, but that you are more confident that you are working effectively. Others might help you gain new or improved skills or help you to make changes to working practices.

We use the term ‘seek to ensure’ in standard 3 because there may be some instances where the CPD activity you carried out to improve your practice is not as effective as you thought it would be.

You cannot always anticipate the actual benefits of CPD activity. The important thing is to consider why the activity was not as helpful as you thought it would be, and how you might do things differently in future. As long as you can explain this if asked, you will still meet this standard.