It is crucial when completing Continuing Professional Development (CPD) activities to include the process of recording and reflecting. This article provides a breakdown of what is a CPD record, what do you need to record your CPD activities, benefits of recording your CPD, where can I record my CPD as well as general tips for recording your CPD.
What is a CPD record?
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is all about maintaining and improving your skills and knowledge through training courses and qualifications. A CPD record is usually kept in the form of a portfolio, and should include goals and objectives in order to help you reflect and improve even more. It's a record of what you experience, learn and then apply. Most professionals will be required to maintain a CPD record and update it regularly in order to meet the requirements of the professional bodies within their industry.
What do you need to record your CPD activities?
If you are thinking about what needs to be in your Continuing Professional Development record, a good place to start would be the date that the training took place. This is so you can keep a clear and concise record of when you took the time to develop your skills, and if the course lasts over a couple of weeks or months then it will be far easier to monitor when you participated.
The next thing we would recommend when logging your CPD record would be the duration of any training course that you have completed. A CPD activity is recorded in terms of learning outcomes and practical application of the knowledge obtained. This is typically measured by the number of hours an individual delegate has spent in a learning environment. It is typically down to the individual to record the correct or most appropriate level of CPD hours for their professional body.