What do registrants need to know now we’ve entered the final year of the CPD cycle?
A blog from Samara Morgan, Head of Education - Development.
We are now in the final year of our current three-year CPD cycle. With the cycle’s finish line in sight, it is important that all fully qualified registrants are aware of the key CPD requirements that will need to be completed by the end of December 2024.
Reflective exercise
Reflection is important in supporting you in your professional development. It helps to embed good practice and has been linked to improvements in the quality of care given to patients.
This year, all registrants will need to complete a reflective exercise. Here you will review the Personal Development Plan (PDP) you should have completed at the beginning of the cycle; reflect on your experiences in practise over the course of the cycle; and consider where you want to develop your skills. This will be through a discussion with a peer and should take place once all, or most, of your CPD requirements have been met.
A peer may be another healthcare professional, including an optometrist or dispensing optician, but cannot be a close friend, relative or employee.
The functionality to enter this in to MyCPD will be available from 1 July 2024, but this doesn’t mean you can’t have your conversation sooner than this. We will shortly be publishing a template on our website to support these conversations so you can simply enter the detail in MyCPD after 1 July.
Personal Development Plan (PDP)
The PDP informs part of the reflective exercise requirement so, if you are in the minority of registrants still to upload a PDP, please upload one to MyCPD as soon as possible.
The PDP should act as a personal road map for your learning requirements. Therefore, as it’s the start of the new year, we’d also encourage registrants to check over their completed PDPs. Has your scope of practice or learning needs changed recently? If so, it may be time to refresh and update your PDP.
More information about completing and updating the PDP is available on our YouTube channel and on our website.
Other requirements, including points targets
Registrants should be aiming to complete at least one point per month to meet the total of 36 points over the three-year cycle; registrants with an additional supply (AS), supplementary prescribing (SP) and/or independent prescribing (IP) specialty should ensure they complete an additional 18 points to also meet their specialty registration requirements.
As of the end of December 2023, we could see 51% of optometrists and 47% of dispensing opticians were on course to meet their points target. In relation to the specialty points target, 42% of optometrists with a prescribing specialty and 40% of contact lens opticians were on course.
In addition to meeting the points targets there are other requirements which need to be met including, but not limited to, interactive points and peer review. To remind yourself of the full requirements, read our CPD guidance for registrants.
We’d encourage you to fulfil your points and other requirements as soon as you can – leaving it too late means you run the risk of missing your targets, which could lead to removal from the register.
Don’t forget, you don’t have to rely on GOC CPD providers for all your points. Up to half of your points can come through self-directed CPD, which is any learning you undertake that is relevant to your professional role. It is now available in all domains, and to log your self-directed points you will simply need to outline the details of your learning and fill in a short reflection statement on MyCPD.
We wish all our registrants the best in completing their requirements during this final year of the CPD cycle. As always, the GOC CPD team are here to support you if you have any queries – simply email cpd@optical.org.