Staying on top of the game is important for all professions and professionals working within them, but for registered dental practitioners it is essential. The clinical, ethical and management requirements contained within continuing professional development (CPD) are imperatives established by the General Dental Council (GDC), endorsed by the profession, and they cannot be shirked or deferred.
The GDC’s formal requirements of minimum attainment at CPD are currently set at 250 completed hours over five years, including a number of core subjects. These requirements are expected to change in the course of 2014, including the number of hours and the declaration regime.
There has been lively discussion that CPD is not about getting the hours in as quickly and easily as possible, but about continually ensuring that knowledge is up to date and learning is relevant to an individual’s practice. The danger of CPD succumbing to a tick-box culture of easy-virtue qualification has been a view shared by many within the profession, not least our regulator, and the British Dental Association (BDA) is keen to avoid the ‘race to the bottom’ in terms of quality and standards.
The BDA acknowledges that its members have voiced concerns about retaining the high quality CPD they have been accessing through the organisation’s publications, and after listening to those concerns has set out to deliver a CPD system that retains the essential challenge expected by the majority of the profession and required by the GDC.
Following its recent consultation on changes to the CPD scheme, the GDC published a statement calling on providers to deliver robust quality assurance of their CPD products and services, asking for the dental CPD industry to develop quality standards, and encouraging registrants to make careful choices for their CPD.
The BDA’s new CPD Hub launched this month answers this guidance. It also continues the successful partnership with the Eastman Dental Institute and will provide the professional development needed in a way which reduces the administration and process.
The tool has been created as a simple, user-friendly and accessible one-stop shop for all BDA members’ CPD requirements, including a break-down of the required core subjects. It provides a streamlined approach to gaining CPD hours from the two BDA publications brought together conveniently in one place, including allowing 48 hours of verifiable CPD every year from the British Dental Journal and 12 hours from BDA News. This means member-users now have the opportunity to gain quality CPD and store their records in one place in an online BDA system rather than going to separate websites.
It will also be possible for members to add material from external sources manually. For example, if members have attended a course at a local postgraduate centre, they can add their CPD hours to their personal record and scan the certificate to link it to that entry. It will make it easier to manage the record, add learning activities, scan documents and certificates for safe-keeping and see progress at a glance. Total CPD hours – verifiable and general – will clearly show in the member’s individual record page.
The CPD Hub will develop over time as the GDC moves forward with its plans for a new CPD scheme, expected in 2014. The number of mandatory verifiable hours is expected to change to 100 for dentists, without the need to declare general CPD to the GDC any longer, although recording it is still advisable to show the extent of relevant learning and reflection. The system for verifiable CPD declarations is expected to become stricter, with mandatory annual declarations of the CPD a registrant has undertaken becoming a prerequisite for continued registration. A personal development plan is also being considered. No final decision on these proposals has been made at the time of writing, but whatever the results, the BDA’s CPD Hub will make life easier for members so that they can comply with any new requirements for CPD recording or presentation as they are introduced.
The new CPD Hub is cutting edge and based on a sophisticated learning management system used globally by hundreds of top universities and academic institutions, including the Open University, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital and BMI Healthcare. I, along with other members of the BDA’s Principal Executive Committee have tried it out and found it easy to use. I think it is an exciting and helpful development that will keep standards high and ensure quality CPD for the profession.