Planning your CPD
A professional development plan (PDP) is a tool that will assist you to meet your learning needs and career goals. Once you have developed your PDP, it will guide your selection of continuing professional development, and will enable you to prioritise what CPD to engage in.
The process of developing your PDP involves reflecting on, and considering:
- Where you are now in your career, and where you want to go
- What areas of practice you would like to strengthen
- What your short and long term goals are
- What ongoing learning you will need in order to meet your goals
- What resources and time will be required
When you are setting your goals, it might be useful to make them SMART (S-specific, M-measurable, A-achievable, R-relevant and T-time-bound). This will help with planning, and in future, evaluation.
A PDP will support your application for an Annual Practicing Certificate from the Physiotherapy Board, and in some cases, is required. When completed, a PDP can also be a useful document for annual employment reviews to show evidence of your achievements, learning and meeting goals.
Selecting which CPD to attend
It is important that the CPD you attend is of high quality, so that your time and money is well spent. PNZ has developed a set of best practice guidelines for formal professional development to help you select high quality CPD.
The guidelines are a quality assurance tool that will help you to evaluate the quality of CPD activities before selecting which activity to attend. They are also useful for providers of CPD activities to determine and enhance the quality of their provision.