Continuing Professional Development
Continuing professional development (CPD) assists you to maintain and enhance your competence and professional practice. It can help you to progress through your career and to achieve you goals.
To be the most powerful, CPD is cyclical: it is planned, and once you have completed and recorded your CPD activities, you reflect on them. Your reflection then feeds into your next lot of planning, and the cycle continues.
The CPD cycle:
The CPD cycle has four steps:
Plan
Planning your CPD enables you to take control of your professional development and gives you greater control over your professional career. It allows you to identify where you are, where you want to go, and how to get there.
- Develop your Professional Development Plan.
- Ensure that any formal professional development
activities included in your plan meet PNZ's Guidelines for formal professional development.
- Include a Professional Relationship (e.g., peer review, supervision, mentoring) in your plan to assist you to develop and enhance your professional practice and well-being.
Do
Undertake the CPD activities that you have planned.
Record
Record your CPD activities (e.g., in your log book) as you participate in them and save supporting evidence. This helps you to keep track of the CPD you have engaged in, and provides evidence of this.
Reflect
Reflecting on your CPD activities and professional practice helps you to maximize your learning. It may help you to identify 'deeper' learning, how to integrate your new learning into practice, and your next learning steps. PNZ has developed guidance and resources to assist you with reflection.
Professional relationships (e.g., peer review, supervision and mentoring) play an important role in physiotherapists' continuing professional development and professional practice throughout their career. Professional relationships can help you to reflect more effectively. Information and resources about professional relationships have been provided for your use.