Continued Learning & CPD
Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
CPD is changing for all doctors
As your chosen CPD home, ACD is helping you prepare for a new CPD program.
In response to the Medical Board of Australia’s changed registration and recertification requirements, ACD has updated the CPD Framework to support you meeting these conditions.
As of 1 January 2023, the new MBA requirements involve logging 50 hours of CPD per year and completing a professional development plan.
Your 50 hours need to include:
- A minimum of 12.5 hours of activities in Category 1: Educational Activities
Category 1: Educational Activities are traditional activities such as conferences, personal reading, or online modules
- A minimum of 25 hours of activities across Category 2: Reviewing Performance and Category 3: Measuring Outcomes.
Category 2: Reviewing Performance involves feedback from others on a clinical and professional practice, such as peer review of records or patient feedback.
Category 3: Measuring Outcomes involves measurement of health outcomes and might include an audit of standards or guidelines, practice against relevant recommendations, or incident reporting and monitoring. You must complete a minimum of 5 hours in each of these categories and can decide the best mix to suit your practice.
This might mean you can complete 5 hours of activities in category 2 and 20 hours in category 3. Or you could complete 15 hours of activities in category 2 and 10 hours in category 3.
The remaining 12.5 hours can be completed across any of the categories.
For further information on the new CPD Categories, please view the Categories guide below.
Other changes:
Points have now been changed to hours. As a requirement of the Medical Board, you will also need to complete a Professional Development Plan (PDP) each year. We have created a simple tool on the MyCPD Dashboard to make the process as easy as possible for you.
Types of CPD Activities:
Here are some examples for the different CPD activities in each type of CPD.
Educational CPD activities could include:
| Reading, viewing, listening to educational materials or completing online modules | Study towards formal qualifications |
| Lectures, forums and panels | Small group meetings |
| Teaching, lecturing, examining, assessing and evaluating | Undertaking College educational roles |
Reviewing performance activities could include:
Completion of the Professional Development Plan (this is a mandatory requirement, but you will be eligible to claim time for it) | Self-evaluation and reflection |
| Patient experience survey | Workplace performance appraisal |
| Peer review group meetings (facilitating and participating) | Participating in clinical governance/QA committees |
Measuring outcomes activities could include:
| Clinical audit (practice, national or international) | Non-clinical audit |
| Individual quality improvement project | Multidisciplinary team meetings |
| Root cause analysis | Incident reports |
For further information on the new CPD Program, please view the new CPD Handbook below.
Frequently Asked Questions
The MBA requires all Colleges to implement a calendar year CPD cycle from the 1st January, 2023.
The Medical Board of Australia (MBA) has introduced the new CPD registration standard that has four main changes for CPD:
- The introduction of CPD homes
- The introduction of professional development plans (PDPs) for all doctors
- A requirement for doctors to do different types of CPD to improve the value of their professional development
- A requirement for doctors to do 50 hours of CPD each year.
- Educational Activities
Educational activities include those that expand upon your general dermatology and medical knowledge and skills. Activities such as lectures, conferences, workshops, podcasts and courses.
- Reviewing Performance
Reviewing performance involves an activity that requires reflection on your work, and the feedback associated with it. Feedback might be from patients, peers or colleagues.
- Measuring Outcomes
Measuring outcomes includes activities that use your own work data to ensure value. You can achieve this by conducting audits, undertaking research, or evaluations.
The Professional Development Plan is a mandatory requirement from the 1st January, 2023. This is a natural evolution from the current CPD Learning Plan, and is intended to be undertaken at the start of the CPD program, and reviewed at the end. The PDP is a planning tool to guide Fellows through CPD for the year, and can be used to identify development needs both personally and professionally.
If you are a member of an AMC-accredited specialist College for each of your specialist registrations, it may be possible for you to complete your CPD within one AMC-accredited College or CPD home. Some Colleges have opted to mandate specialist high-level requirements – you will be required to complete these for each College if this is the case. At this time, ACD has opted not to mandate and specialist high-level requirements.
There will be overlap, and College will recognise other CPD activities from other CPD homes. We don’t expect you to have to do the same thing twice, please email the CPD Team at cpd@dermcoll.edu.au if you need more information or to discuss your own requirements.
Fellows must retain documented evidence of their participation in CPD activities, as per previous years.
As a member of ACD, you’ll be automatically enrolled in to the ACD CPD program.
Providers who wish to have their CPD activity recognised by the Australasian College of Dermatologists for its members to claim CPD points, please contact the CPD team via email cpd@dermcoll.edu.au
Need assistance with CPD?
Contact ACD’s CPD Team via email at cpd@dermcoll.edu.au
