CPD

1. What is CPD? Continuing Professional Development exists as a method to ensure that consultants' keep their knowledge up-to-date allowing them (hopefully) to be able to breeze through the revalidation process! 

The GMC have published a 28-page CPD guidance document (click here), and their definition of CPD is as follows:

"CPD is any learning outside of undergraduate education or postgraduate training that helps you maintain and improve your performance. It covers the development of your knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours across all areas of your professional practice. It includes both formal and informal learning activities."

2. How to measure your CPD? 

This is not such an important issue for trainees, as your eportfolio/training folder provide evidence of your continuing professional development. Once you become a consultant, however, this mechanism is no longer available. The Royal College of Physicians provide a CPD diary that can be used to log CPD - they also provide a CPD diary for trainees (click here). At the moment, this is free of charge, and allows you to record your clinical and non-clinical CPD. It is recommended that trainees begin to use the RCP CPD diary within the final two years of training.

Presently, you need to accrue 50 points over a 12-month period to satisfy current CPD guidelines. Attendance at the American Society of Nephrology Congress, for example, attracts 33 points. 10 points can be added through informal activities. As trainees, whether a course attracts CPD points or not, and the number of points that are awarded, are not really concerns. As a consultant, this diary is the only way to demonstrate that adequate CPD is being maintained.