How I meet my CPD requirements

Dr Victor Lau, Jurisdictional Member SA, CCPD

I like to think that my completion of CPD is getting more efficient each year. In any case, it’s getting more familiar since I Fellowed in 2019.

My yearly plan is usually informed by what happened in the previous year, including any gaps that came up in my knowledge and experience. It’s an evolving document that also includes long-term goals; areas in which I want to increase my skills are written down in the plan, even if it isn’t a main focus for that year.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have found myself in a few good peer review groups, with access to a broad range of experience and scope of practice between them. In my opinion, PRGs are one of the most important aspects of CPD, which I’ve found very helpful in terms of keeping up to date with clinical practice, and find in them a necessarily safe place to discuss clinical issues with esteemed colleagues. 

My practice improvement section (Section 3) has previously included small audits that answered questions I had about my own practice, and I’ve also participated in specific reviews to improve my report writing. Also, as a quick tip, there are a couple of section 3 training modules in LearnIt that legitimately count to completion of this section – but you can only do them once.

I’ve been happy to use the self-guided learning section (Section 4) as a way to formally record my conference attendance. I have attended conferences held by a few different College faculties now, and they have been very informative and interesting. I now prefer attending one of these to Congress, although I’ll definitely do both if I can.

Besides that, getting to one or two conferences a year plus a few different PRGs each month gets me the required extra hours.