The CPD home must be suitable for your scope of practice and can be a college or non-college home.

CPD homes are quality-assured and support safe practice. They:

• provide CPD programs that are robust, monitored and evaluated
• support doctors to tailor CPD to their learning needs
• are accredited by the AMC
• coordinate CPD programs, ensure quality activities and help doctors keep track of their CPD hours with a system for CPD record-keeping
• make sure doctors meet CPD requirements, including for:
  • culturally safe practice
  • addressing health inequities
  • professionalism and
  • ethical practice.

All doctors need a CPD home each year (unless exempt). Doctors:

• must join an AMC-accredited CPD home before they start doing their CPD each calendar year.
• choose a home that is suitable for your scope of practice, which can be a college or non-college home.
• must log CPD activities with their CPD home
• will need to declare which is their CPD home each year when they renew their registration.

Doctors can be granted an exemption or variation from CPD by their CPD home. Exemptions or variations can be granted for continuous absence from practice of at least six months and up to and including 12 months for parental or carer leave, serious illness or other approved circumstances.The Board cannot provide exemptions directly to doctors.

The following doctors do not need to join a CPD home:

• Interns in accredited intern training programs and PGY2 doctors who are participating in a PGY2 training program accredited by your State or Territory postgraduate medical council (or equivalent), and/or working in supervised clinical practice positions in a hospital or general practice setting. You will be deemed to have met the standard for CPD by participating in your position and any associated education.
• medical practitioners who have limited registration in the public interest or limited registration for teaching or research (to demonstrate a procedure or participate in a workshop) and who have been granted registration for no more than four weeks
• medical practitioners with non-practising registration.

The following doctors complete their CPD through the relevant specialist medical college:

• Specialist trainees are automatically able to meet the CPD requirements by participating in an accredited specialist training program accredited specialist medical college.
• Specialist international medical graduates (SIMGs) with limited registration in the specialist pathway must do the CPD through the accredited specialist medical college undertaking your assessment.

Accredited CPD homes

• There are 21 AMC-accredited CPD homes for doctors to choose from. This includes all specialist medical colleges and five non-college homes.
• Learn more about the different CPD homes at the Medical Board of Australia Website

Professional Development Plans (PDP) are a tool to help make sure the CPD being done is relevant and useful.

PDPs:

• help us think about our lifelong learning, knowledge gaps and learning opportunities
• connect our learning to our practice needs
• match our increasing skills and knowledge to changes in our practice.

Templates for PDPs may be provided by CPD homes.

Click here to download an example of a PDP template that you may find useful. (see PDP attachment)

Time spent doing – and reviewing – a PDP counts towards the 50 CPD hours required each year, as a performance measurement activity. PDPs should not take long to complete and do not need to be a complicated document.

Each calendar year you will need to record 50 hours of CPD across different activity types. There are some required activity types, but also flexibility in how you make up some of your hours.

GPs are required to develop and improve their practice by engaging in at least one relevant CPD activity in the following areas each year. This CPD is part of the annual 50 hours requirement, not additional.

• Culturally safe practice
• Health inequities
• Professionalism and ethical practice

These requirements can be found in section C3, Criteria for AMC Accreditation of CPD Homes.

Complete a CPR Course Each Triennium

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) course (HLTAID009 provide cardiopulmonary resuscitation) is the specialist high-level requirement for general practice. Specialist GPs must complete a CPR course once each triennium, e.g. once in the 2023-25 triennium. The RACGP will also accept basic life support (BLS) and advanced life support (ALS) courses that include CPR and meets the Australian Resuscitation Council guidelines. The Medical Board of Australia has determined that all CPR courses will only be eligible for hours under the Educational Activities CPD type.

For example with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, many CPD activities will already be accredited with them, with the logging of these hours done by the provider on your behalf, removing the need for you to submit your hours manually with the college. For example, all Healthscope CPD modules that are on Praxhub are accredited with the RACGP, with hours automatically uploaded to your CPD record on your behalf.

Alternatively, all colleges provide the standard option to self-record CPD, for example as shown here for the RACGP.

Irrespective of whether your education was accredited or self-recorded, evidence of your annual CPD activities must be retained for three years. See the RACGP’s evidence guide here.

Click here to visit the MBA website for more information