CPD: Just do it

Not knowing ‘what’ and ‘how’ can impede your CPD journey

Many registrants can find it really hard to even get started with continuing professional development (CPD). From work, family and carer commitments to health issues and logistics, it can be easy to put off taking part in CPD. Simply not understanding what to do, and how to do it, can be a major impediment to getting going.

Undertaking CPD on a regular basis is the best approach to ensure you stay on top of your requirements. Finding yourself at the end of the year, or at the end of the cycle, with little or no CPD under your belt can leave you in an extremely tricky position – struggling to achieve even the bare minimum. In this article, I will share some hints and tips to help you get going – and keep going – with your CPD requirements.

How to get started

If you’re struggling to get started, consider speaking with your employer to see how they may be able to help you undertake CPD during ‘office hours’. It should be obvious to them that having staff who are up-to-date on their professional and clinical skills is in their best interests – as well as that of their patients.

Start with something you can access in your own time, such as distance learning CPD. This can be found in your personal membership area on the ABDO website; in addition, many manufacturers have distance learning CPD sessions free to access online. Most distance learning CPD takes one hour to complete, and you may be able to save your progress and come back to it, completing it in bitesized chunks.

The General Optical Council (GOC) has allowed shorter sessions to be accredited for CPD. Now, a session lasting 30 minutes or more, but less than one hour, can give you 0.5 CPD points. It may be that you can negotiate with your workplace or family to have a regular 30 to 60 minutes every two to four weeks to allow you complete a CPD session.

Once you have some CPD under your belt, actively look for an opportunity to obtain your interactive points. You can achieve interactive CPD online through webinars, peer review or discussion workshops, from your home and/or workplace if travel and time out is difficult.

Remember: how you undertake your CPD is taken into consideration by the GOC should you be in the unfortunate position of considering requesting exceptional circumstances at the close of the cycle. The GOC expects registrants to undertake regular CPD to remain safe to practise, so it will not be favourable if your record does not reflect this. The expectation set out by the GOC is that all registrants should obtain a minimum of six CPD points per year.

Uploading your CPD

It is now your professional responsibility to inform the GOC that you have completed CPD by uploading it to their platform. If you complete CPD though an approved GOC provider, the provider should supply you with a certificate of completion within 10 working days of you successfully completing the session.

For all sessions you complete with ABDO as an ABDO member, certificates are accessed from your personal membership area on the ABDO website. It is likely that the majority of other CPD providers will email certification of completion to registrants.

Do not leave yourself in a position later in the cycle where you are scrabbling in your email to find those containing CPD certificates, as you need to upload them to the GOC. Although all CPD providers will keep records and audit trails, requests to resend emails for sessions where the registrant can’t remember the date they attended, or what the CPD was called, will not be received with joy.

Many CPD providers offer CPD as a small part of their overall position in the industry, such as spectacle or contact lens manufacturers. Requesting a dig through their files to look for a certificate may not be processed with the same urgency you feel the task requires.

Storing and uploading tips

• Create a folder for all your CPD certificates on a device of your choice and consider cloud storage
• Download CPD certificates and store them in your CPD folder as soon as you obtain them from the provider
• Regularly upload your CPD to the GOC. Consider doing this straightaway when you obtain your certificate of completion, or setting aside a specific day/time once a month to complete this task

If you do not feel you have received a certificate of completion, chase this up with the provider after 10 working days from the session. Do not leave it for months or even years. Remember: your ABDO CPD certificates are not emailed to you but will be in your personal membership area.

Reflect on patient encounters you have experienced

Reflection and planning

GOC registrants have now been given more freedom to complete learning that is relevant to their personal scope of practice, and which aligns with their professional development plans.

Reflection is a key element of this. Reflection is a cyclical and, therefore, ongoing process. As a GOC registrant, you should ideally have already reflected on your experience in the previous CET cycle, as well as your current scope of practice and where you would like to be in three years’ time when you created your initial CPD personal development plan (PDP).

This PDP and the learning outcomes you create should guide you in what CPD you seek from approved providers, and what self-directed learning you may consider. Every time you complete a CPD session, you should then reflect on that experience. This reflection should include the question: “Has this session highlighted any gaps in my knowledge or skills?” or something similar. This then may lead onto new learning outcomes being created, an updated PDP, or simply a search for more CPD in the same area to enable understanding to be deepened or skills to honed.

Refelection tips

• Find a reflection model and/or a reflection template that suits you. The GOC has a template you can download and ABDO has a reflective learning statement and guidance on reflection available in the Professional Development Toolbox
• Try to take the time to complete a good reflection for each piece of CPD you complete as soon as you are able to after the session
• Store your reflection statements and your PDP copies in your CPD storage folder
• Regularly review your PDP, amend it as required and create new learning outcomes as these develop from your previous learning. Upload your new PDP to the GOC platform • Consider how your working practices can be brought into being a reflective practitioner, such as reflecting on patient encounters you have experienced
• Reflect on other experiences – positive or negative – that you have had with colleagues or business practices that may impact your patient care
• Reflect on how changes could be made to improve overall patient care
• Put into place practice audits, risk assessments and reviews to highlight where there may be opportunities to improve patient care and reflect on how this may be achieved

Resources to support CPD

• The GOC is the administrator of the CPD scheme and provides information for all registrants on the scheme requirements, along with information on self-directed learning and reflection. Click here for guidance.
• The ABDO CPD pages on the ABDO website contain lots of information to support undertaking CPD including advice on how to locate your CPD certificates and advice on how to book and cancel a place on an ABDO event.
• The ABDO Professional Development Toolbox contains lots of useful documents that can support you with planning and reflecting on CPD, including self-directed learning such as registrant-led peer review.

Alexandra Webster MSc, PGDIPE, FBDO CL, FHEA, FBCLA is head of CPD at ABDO.