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What Basically CPD Is

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64 views2 pages

What Basically CPD Is

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Ultra Channel
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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WHAT BASICALLY CPD IS?

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a combination of approaches, ideas and techniques that
will help you manage your own learning and growth. The focus of CPD is firmly on results – the benefits
that professional development can bring you in the real world.

Continuing professional development (CPD) is the intentional maintenance and development of the
knowledge and skills needed to perform in a professional context. This could mean honing current skills,
it could mean developing them to a new level, or it could mean learning new ones that will allow an
employee’s job role to expand or prepare them for potential promotion.

Continuing Professional Development enables individuals to adapt positively to changes in both work and
industry requirements. Planning CPD helps an individual to be more efficient with their time, and
recording CPD properly provides evidence of Continuing Professional Development, which can be useful
for professional body obligations as well employer supervision and appraisals.

CPD shows a clear commitment to self-development and professionalism. CPD provides an opportunity
for an individual to identify knowledge gaps and to resolve these in a recognizable approach to
improvement.

The Continuous Professional Development Cycle shows that professional development is, like much
other learning, best thought of as a circular series of activities. The process moves from identifying your
development needs through planning and then carrying out your learning activities, to reflecting on your
learning, and then applying it and sharing it with others.

Perhaps the most important thing about CPD is that it is personal.

Each individual is expected to identify their own needs, organize their own training, and learn for
themselves. Part of being a professional is taking responsibility for your own skills and recognizing when
they need to improve.

1. Identifying Your Needs


There are a number of ways in which you can identify development needs.
For example, you can carry out a skills audit. You may receive feedback from colleagues or your line
manager about an area in which you are weaker. Alternatively, you may have an interest in a particular
area and want to develop your knowledge.

Once you have identified your key areas for development, you then need to plan your activities.

2. Planning and Carrying Out Development Activities


Development activities may be either:
Formal, such as training courses or particular qualifications. These are often, though not always, provided
by an external provider, and may carry a cost. Your employer may have a limit on what they are prepared
to pay, so you may need to consider self-funding or alternatives such as online resources that are cheaper
or even free.
Informal learning, including side-by-side learning, video training (for example, for doctors in particular
surgical techniques), shadowing, mentoring, coaching or reading on the subject.
There is a growing recognition that continuing professional development is both essential and potentially
expensive. Especially in developing countries, professionals are using the internet to share teaching
content for free, or at very low cost. You may find that an imaginative approach to seeking out
development activities pays off.

3. Reflecting on Your Learning


Reflecting on what you have learned is a vital part of continuing professional development. Learning does
not emerge only from activities that you designated as ‘development’, and you may find that you are
learning at least as much from your day-to-day activities.

Opportunities and threats


Opportunities and threats are part of the external environment — it includes factors that impact the
objective or project from outside the company. This can include economics, technology, regulation and
legislation, sociocultural changes and shifts in competition.

Opportunities are factors outside the organization that the business can take advantage of to reach
business goals and move the business forward. Threats include anything in the external environment that
might cause issues for a project or that pose a future threat to the organization’s success.

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