1. HPC CPD Audit – What To Do If You’re Chosen Rachel Appleton, Senior Radiographer, North Wales Cancer Treatment Centre. Background The Health Professions Council is the regulatory body of 15 health professions. They were set up to protect the public and achieve this by holding a register of properly qualified health professions who must meet standards set by the HPC. By auditing registrants CPD activities the HPC can assess whether a registrant is maintaining their skills and developing within their role. HPC Standards for CPD state that registrants must: Maintain a continuous, up-to-date and accurate record of their CPD activities; Demonstrate that their CPD activities are a mixture of learning activities relevant to current or future practice; Seek to ensure that their CPD has contributed to the quality of their practice and service delivery; Seek to ensure that their CPD benefits the service user; and Present a written profile containing evidence of their CPD upon request. 11.1% The Health Professionals Council Continuous Professional Development CPD is a process that leads to improving professional knowledge and skills and can be made up of both formal and informal learning 1. Due to constant changes in policy and technological advances within radiotherapy, radiotherapists must maintain their level of competence at all times and adapt their knowledge and skills accordingly to become competent in new techniques and ways of working. This is referred to as continuous professional development 2, 3. HPC registrants must record their CPD activities and up date this record regularly to ensure that it is accurate and current. The CPD activities must be wide-ranging and relevant to current and future practice. The CPD activity should influence and improve personal professional practice or service delivery, including benefiting the service user. All evidence of CPD should be documented in written form, in order that it can be presented for audit if an individual is selected by the HPC 4. A barrier is something that can hinder further education or inhibits professional change 5. Awareness of barriers to CPD can lead to overcoming these barriers. Barriers to CPD that are repeatedly reported within the literature are Time, Cost and Availability of Resources 6, 7. Commitments other than work, including social or family commitments may also hinder CPD being undertaken. Good communication between managers and staff regarding CPD requirements and what support can be offered should help overcome some of these barriers. Distance learning and Web Based learning facilitate CPD activities as they do not require an individual to travel to undertake an activity and there is no travel costs associated with the activity. At North Wales Cancer Treatment Centre we are very well supported in CPD and Further Education. Where possible funding is made available for Post Graduate Study (e.g MSc courses), Conference Attendance and any relevant in-house training. Every member of staff has half a day per month allocated CPD time and staff doing MSc study are entitled to three full days study per 15 Credit Module. Barriers to CPD and how to overcome them

2. Section 1: CPD Profile – This must include your profession, CPD Number (Provided in the letter from the HPC), and you HPC Registration number. Section 2: Summary of your recent work/practice – This (Max) 500 word summary should describe what you do in your job. I found it useful to base this on my job description and informed them of specialist roles in which I participate e.g. involvement in the Imaging Group, Feminine Care Advice Team and Student Assessment. Section 3: Personal Statement – This should describe how you meet standards 1-4 (Standard 5 is the profile you submit so does not need to be included here.) Section 4: Summary of supporting evidence. The HPC provide you with a table in which you must summarise the evidence you are submitting for audit. This is different to your complete list of all your CPD activities as you only need to include the list of evidence you have chosen for them to review. Below is my summary of supporting evidence. You must submit a MINIMUM of 6 pieces of evidence. What to Submit What I Submitted The list of my CPD activities demonstrates a variety of up to date activities that I have undertaken, it also demonstrates that the activities are continuous and have been carried out regularly rather than lumped together. Within your record of CPD activity you may wish to consider including; Courses/Conferences – local, national, international Ongoing education – e.g. diplomas, MSc, PhD Private study – reading journals, web resources, books etc. Professional activities – e.g. SoR related business Mentoring of students. The record you keep can either be electronic or a hard copy. If you are involved in a CPD Scheme, such as SoR CPD scheme you could mention that in your record. Standard 2: Registrants must demonstrate that their CPD activities are a mixture of learning activities relevant to current or future practice. The HPC website has good examples of different types of activities that can be included in your profile. They divide them up under the following headings: Work Based Learning Professional Activity Formal / Educational Self-directed learning Other Under each of these headings is examples of what to include and I found this a good place to start. If you look at what you already have you will probably find that a lot of the CPD work you have done falls in their activity categories. It is important to ensure that what you include as CPD is relevant to what they want. The activities should relate to your current role and any future direction that your role may take or progression within your profession. To do do this your activities could include scientific developments or practice advancements in your field, professional or personal developments over the past two years and plans for future professional or personal developments. Standard 3:Seek to ensure that their CPD has contributed to the quality of their practice and service delivery. Standard 4:Seek to ensure that their CPD benefits the service user. Standards 3 and 4 are very similar and I chose to discuss these as a joint entity in my personal statement as I felt the evidence I submitted could be cross referenced to demonstrate that I satisfied both of these standards. Ultimately here the most important thing to realise is that Standard 3 is pertinent to how your CPD benefits you and how you work, whereas Standard 4 is more concerned with how your CPD activities benefit the service user. i.e. the patient, their carers, students, other staff etc. My submission was not accepted initially as the HPC felt that my evidence did not demonstrate that I met Standard 4. To me it was clear that my CPD examples benefit the service user, some directly and some indirectly, however re- reading over what I had submitted made me realise it may not be so clear to someone else. I contacted the HPC to ask for some advice about how I should proceed with my resubmission and they advised me to write a short piece (no more than a side of A4 typed) explaining clearly why and how I felt the examples submitted prove I meet Standard 4. I justified each submitted example and made the link between them and the relevant standard clear, I then sent this back to the HPC and my resubmission was accepted. To avoid this happening again, I now include a simple justification paragraph with each CPD activity I undertake and state the link to which HPC standard it relates. Standard 1: A registrant must maintain a continuous, up-to-date record of their CPD activity. The following is an extract from the personal statement that I submitted. Evidence 1 refers to a list of all my CPD activities over the past 2 years. Since qualifying in September 2005, I have maintained a Professional Practice Portfolio, within which I have collated evidence to demonstrate my clinical competence and continuous professional development. The evidence within my portfolio satisfies the requirements of both the Knowledge and Skills Framework and Health Professions Council standards. I have included a complete list of the evidence within my portfolio to demonstrate that I have met HPC CPD Standard 1 (Evidence 1).

3. Background Conclusion If you are chosen don’t panic! Look at what CPD you have done and how it can be used or adapted to show you meet the HPC CPD standards. Ask your colleagues for their advice and support, they may have ideas that you haven’t thought of. I found it useful for someone to read through my submission prior to sending it off. Look at the advice and sample profiles on the HPC website, if you are really stuck give the HPC a call, they are very approachable and helpful. 5.5% 11.1% References 1. HERON, R (1999). Partnerships and educational benefits in post graduate nursing education [online] Australasian Journal of Neuroscience, 12, (2), 80-81. Article from Science Direct last accessed 14 th August 2010 at: http://www.sciencedirect.com 2. HAINES, P and HENWOOD S M (1998). Does CPET meet clinical needs? [online] Radiography. 4, 2, 79-87. Article from Science Direct last accessed 14 th August 2010 at: http://www.sciencedirect.com 3. BAUMANN, M., VERFAILLE, C., HEEREN, G and LEER, J W (2004) Shaping the future: training of professionals for radiotherapy in Europe [online] Journal of Radiotherapy and Oncology, 70, 2, 103-105. Article from Science Direct last accessed 14 th August 2010 at: http://www.sciencedirect.com 4. www.hpc-uk.org 5. NOLAN, M., OWENS, R. G., NOLAN, J. (1995) Continuing professional education: identifying the characteristics of an effective system [online] Journal of Advanced Nursing. 21 551–60. Article from Science Direct last accessed 18 th August 2010 at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ 6. FRENCH, H.P. and DOWDS, J. (2008) An overview of Continuing Professional Development in physiotherapy [online] Physiotherapy. 94 (3) 190-197. Article from Science Direct last accessed 18 th August 2010 at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ 7. GUNN, H. and GODING, L. (2008) Continuing Professional Development of physiotherapists based in community primary care trusts: a qualitative study investigating perceptions, experiences and outcomes [online] Physiotherapy. article in press. Article from Science Direct last accessed 29 th August 2010 at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/