Welcome to the first Director of Professional Development (DPD) update in our newly structured newsletter.
As DPD one of my main roles is to oversee the ongoing recertification programme and to encourage good quality CPD.
CPD can be viewed as an unnecessary imposition on hard-working clinicians so I wanted to use this first newsletter to highlight some of the ways in which our recertification programme allows you flexibility in how you complete and claim your CPD requirements.
Professional Development Plan(PDP)
A PDP is a requirement of our programme and should be the place where you document professional goals. These can be educational, relate to career progression, or relate to personal well-being but the focus should be on your personal development. Where you keep your PDP is up to you but we expect everyone to transcribe their PDP goals into the section of UCCIS marked “View Goals”. You can link activities completed with these goals and when you complete them they remain visible but are crossed off. This allows you to update and adapt your goals which should be done at least once a year at your Structured Annual Conversation (SAC). The importance of your PDP is that it is personal to you and it enables everyone’s CPD to be unique to them and not merely a cut-and-paste activity that we all complete. You can claim CPD, in the relevant sections, so long as it meets your PDP goals. This means that you are not restricted in the activities that you choose.
No limits
To be able to seek out CPD that meets your PDP goals, it is important you not be limited in these activities. There is therefore no upper limit on how much CPD you can claim for certain items, so long as they are aligned to your PDP goals. There are minimum annual requirements that need to be met each year, which ensures variety is maintained, but there is no maximum limit each year on how much you can claim. We do expect that, over time, you will be engaging in a range of different CPD opportunities and audits of your portfolio will be checking to make sure this is happening. But if you are, for example, completing training in POCUS then we recognise that this will form the bulk of your CPD for one year and we will not limit that endeavour.
Audits
An audit activity is required each year. A clinical notes audit and multi-source feedback survey (MSFS) are required once per triennium and these count as an audit for the year in which they are done. But that means that for at least one year a triennium you will be required to do an audit of personal practice. While there are several audits supplied on our website that you may choose to do, you are not restricted to choosing these and are encouraged to design and complete your own. Details of how to do this are on the website and it is the best way for you to get the most out of an audit by asking a question of your practice, gathering and reviewing the data and then making improvements. You are not limited to one audit a year and can do as many as you wish, all claimable as CPD and repeating audits in subsequent cycles is encouraged.
I will discuss more details about our recertification programme in future newsletters.
Multi-source Feedback Survey process
We are tightening up on the MSFS process as these have been dragging on too long in some cases. We will now be allowing 3 months to complete the survey, once started, and if it is not done by this point it will be closed off, marked as a fail and you will have to restart again. Any feedback received up to that point will be shared with you, for reflection. If there are extenuating circumstances then the 3 month time can be extended but it is imperative that you communicate this with the College.
CPD opportunities
If you are looking for ways to fill your CPD requirements, why not consider the following options?
RNZCUC Bootcamp – a weekend of education, discussion, networking and promotion. Join us in Wellington on the 14th and 15th September.
Educational resources – if you are logged into the website the educational resources page links you to the urgent care course material, prior Bootcamp videos, webinars, Connect Communications video suite, and CPD quizzes. For external resources, a recent email from the General Manager has all the relevant links and codes to apply.
Podcast – this has been running weekly for nearly 6 years. In addition to the audio, each podcast links to papers and resources for further reading so there are hundreds of hours of CPD available. While Spotify and Apple only archive the last 100 episodes, you can find and search all 6 years and 330+ episodes at rnzcuc.podbean.com.