CPD and annual conference

The Annual Conference is the most important learning event in the British OT calendar and affords a superb opportunity to enrich and develop your CPD portfolio

The Health Professions Council defines CPD as ‘A range of learning activities through which health professionals maintain and develop throughout their career to ensure that they retain the capacity to practise safely, effectively and legally within their evolving scope of practice.’  www.hpc-uk.org

OTs have to provide evidence of CPD relating to their previous two years of practice 

All HPC registrants are required to engage in Continuing Professional Development (CPD) activities. Registrants need to record and evidence their CPD activities and, if selected for audit, complete their CPD profile, which will be audited by CPD assessors.

OTs have to provide evidence of CPD relating to their previous two years of practice. The evidence will show how the CPD that has been undertaken by the individual has contributed to the quality of their practice and should demonstrate its benefit to the service user. The standards apply to clinical practice, research, management and education.

A registrant 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
• ensure that their CPD has contributed to the quality of their practice and service delivery
• present a written profile containing evidence of their CPD on request

Continuing Professional development is a key aim of these Conferences

Throughout your attendance you will be able to develop your abilities to critically appraise by listening and debating the new ideas and approaches being presented and share your good practice experience with other delegates.

CPD tools available to delegates at Annual Conference

Most of the sessions have identified learning outcomes to help you select the right sessions for your professional development, as well as providing tangible evidence for your CPD portfolio. A CPD action plan form is also available. This will help you to record and subsequently to implement your new learning when you return to work.

The Interactive Learning Opportunities Database (ILOD) provides a range of CPD tools that will help you to produce and to organise your evidence of learning

You might want to follow up the conference by looking further into particular areas and the formal learning opportunities area of iLOD can help you to track down the right events to take your thinking further. iLOD also has a career planning section based on the post qualifying framework which is an OT specific career planning resource.

The reflective tool called ‘Recording CPD: transforming practice through reflection’ is based around the HPC’s requirements for CPD. You can use it to structure your ideas about the conference and gather evidence of your learning for your portfolio and/or for your profile if your CPD is audited by the HPC. The reflective log is an open-ended, broad-based tool, which facilitates a clear account of your learning from all the different learning opportunities at conference.

You may also like to consider how your learning at conference relates to your Personal Development Plan (PDP). To record this, use the PDP pro-forma on iLOD.

Your reflections will be invaluable in your portfolio and may be used to demonstrate and evidence CPD activities. These tools are ideal if you wish to share your learning from conference with work colleagues. These structured and organised reflections on your learning will help you and your colleagues to improve your practice that will further benefit your service users.

Explore career opportunities

Annual Conference is an ideal way of exploring new career paths and opportunities that are available to you. iLOD has a career planning section based on the post qualifying framework.