Still keeping calm and gathering evidence for HCPC as we go?

So have you tracked down your supervision records and/or your gathering of monthly activities recorded in your diary from October 2013? If you have not read the previous blog, you may find it useful to go back to the first one just to catch up?

Let’s start with the list of your activities? Brilliant start, it’s surprising what you can achieve in a year, and a good basis for your annual appraisal. When you go through your months with a fine tooth comb you start to realise how much you have achieved in the year.

Remember we are under half way through the next potential audit dates so you will be able to use its information to inform how, and what information you gather in the next twelve months.

Let’s have a closer look at the lists or records of your different CPD activities from each month. The minimum number of specific activities to aim for is twenty four that would hopefully provide you with evidence that you have met each of the 4 standards required by the HCPC each month. Don’t worry about how to divide them up at the moment that can come later, just try and describe the specific activities that you have undertaken each month.

These things don’t need to be earth shattering or ground breaking. Life and practice move on relentlessly and if we would like the best for the people we work with we should continually critique everything we do, demonstrate our outcomes and ensure what we deliver is evidence based. It is essential we should be highly aware of the cost benefit analysis, and remain a professional service worth paying for, more of that in my future blogs.

To get us back on track here is a random list of some of my CPD activities for last year

Audits

Pilot Studies

Visits

Self directed learning

Literature searches

Reading articles, reviewing and critically evaluating

Action learning

In house training

Annual appraisal

Students

Service developments

Training

Skill development

Photographs

Outcome measures

Meetings

Courses

Critical reflections

Implementing changes

Developing information leaflets

Supervision

Journal club

Special interest group

Training

Please send in suggestions of your own, these may trigger someone else to think, ‘Ahh I forgot about that, I did that’. We are not always the best profession at blowing our own trumpets. Maybe we need to add promotion and PR to our CPD activities next year?

Can you see how looking back enables you to be clear about your plans for next year, and how this all links with regular supervision and annual appraisals?

Your tasks for next two weeks are make sure you have an up to date and accurate list/record of your CPD activities recorded somewhere, which you should have now. Remember the old adage if it’s not recorded it didn’t happen? There also needs to be a written reflection recorded about each of these activities. Use the model you are most comfortable with. Try and have some consistency about where you are keeping your records; computer, file, portfolio etc . We will discuss how we can organise them next time.

I really love it when things become clear and completing one task also means I can fulfil other tasks at the same time with no extra work.

Hopefully you can begin to see that the HCPC is less of a daunting chore hanging over your head every two years but an indispensable, vital ingredient to your own practice.

If you have read and acted on the instructions in this blog you will have completed the following standard

H.C.P.C Standard 1

A registrant must maintain a continuous, up-to-date and accurate record of their CPD activity

Thanks for reading, and I am really looking forward to reading all your CPD activities.