Continuing Professional Development

What is Continuing Professional Development?

hand holding bacterial plate under uv light In 2005 the Health Professions Council (HPC) introduced a requirement for all health professionals registered with them to undertake Continuing Professional Development (CPD). The HPC 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 practise safely, effectively and legally within their evolving scope of practice".

Essentially, CPD is a documented way to ensure a health professional's skills and knowledge are up-to-date, thus ensuring that they can practice competently. All non-trainee health professionals practising under the protected title "Clinical Scientist" must be registered with the HPC, and thus must also undertake CPD.

What are the standards for CPD I must achieve?

The HPC has set standards for CPD for all its registrants. They are:

maintain a continuous, up-to-date and accurate record of CPD activities
demonstrate that CPD activities are a mixture of learning activities relevant to current or future practice
seek to ensure that CPD has contributed to the quality of practice and service delivery
seek to ensure that CPD benefits the service user
present a written profile containing evidence of CPD upon request

You can make your own decisions about what type of CPD activities you perform, depending on their relevance to your job. The important things about these CPD activities are that they must be varied, giving rounded experience, and that all activities must be recorded in whatever format is most convenient to you. The HPC audits CPD activities for selected members of each health professional group when they renew registration, and your records must be available if you are selected. Further information on CPD is available on the HPC website.

What CPD schemes are available?

For most Clinical Scientists with clinical aspects to their practice, the ACB MPC recommends the Royal College of Pathologists CPD scheme. For Biomedical Scientists and Clinical Scientists who don't have a major clinical focus, the Institute of Biomedical Science and the Society of Biology (an amalgamation of the Biosciences Federation and the Institute of Biology) have CPD schemes. There are also private schemes available such as the Microbiology Education Series provided by Cosmos Biomedical. Most of these schemes will require you to join as a member.

Whichever scheme you choose, don't forget to record your activities and keep them up to date as an important part of your HPC registration. Courses, conferences and events that you can attend as part of your CPD can be found on the Meetings and Events page.