HCPC audit: are you ready?

We are well and truly into 2018 – and this is a time of year when we might turn to our continuing professional development (CPD) portfolios to look for information to include in an annual performance review, a job application, a grant application or a CPD profile for submission to the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). 

 

The HCPC registration renewal for physiotherapists opened on 1 February. It ends on 30 April and you must renew your registration by that date to continue working as a physiotherapist. 

 

As part of the re-registration process, the HCPC selects 2.5 per cent of physiotherapy registrants at random to participate in its CPD audit. Selected participants have until the end of April to submit a CPD profile showing how they meet HCPC standards, should you be selected.

 

As CSP adviser Nina Paterson wrote in her new year reflections  in the last issue of Frontline, you will have done all the hard work for the CPD audit already. 

 

This article will help you to organise the information you’ve been gathering about your learning and practice to produce a CPD profile which will show how you meet the HCPC’s standards for CPD. 

 

Even if you’re not picked to take part in the audit, it will help you to prepare a portfolio of evidence to support your annual performance review or an application for your next job.

 

The HCPC’s standards for CPD state that registrants must 

 

In a nutshell, standards 1 to 4 are about engaging in CPD activities with outcomes that will positively impact on your quality of practice, while standard 5 outlines what is expected from the CPD audit process. Visit the HCPC website for information about what is expected. Once you know, start to organise your information – looking for evidence you would like to include to show that you meet the CPD standards. 

 

The CSP and HCPC adopt an outcomes-based approach to CPD, looking at the impact on personal and professional development in practice. Therefore, any learning opportunity has CPD potential and can occur formally or informally, at work or outside it. If you’re not sure, look at the list of CPD activity types on HCPC’s website.

 

You may want to include records from in-house training courses, team sessions, conversations with your mentor/mentee, reflections from practice educator training days, reading, academic courses, voluntary work … the list goes on. Each person’s CPD log is unique, so don’t be too critical. For the CPD audit, the HCPC will accept examples from up to two years ago, when you last registered. 

 

Once you have compiled your evidence, start drafting your profile. This should include a summary of your practice history and a statement of how you have met the HCPC’s standards. Your list of CPD activity will help to show how you meet standards 1 and 2; the evidence of how your learning outcomes connect to your practice will show how you’re meeting standards 3 and 4. 

 

Making the link between your CPD activities and practice may seem difficult at first, but you could approach this by listing your learning outcomes from each activity and then footmark how each has produced definite outcomes in your practice. Alternatively, look at the information you have about practice and service delivery, and how your work benefits service users – to do this, you need to analyse your behaviours, knowledge and skills. Whichever way you decide, you should be able to evidence your current practice and detail how it has progressed. 

 

This is a great opportunity to reflect on your achievements and to celebrate your development.