ABSTRACT
The role of continuing professional development (CPD) is centre-stage in the minds of regulators, educationalists and the profession. In terms of continued fitness to practise and patient safety, as well as maintaining professional standards, a more thoughtful and transparent approach to CPD has gradually become the accepted aim. This chapter presents management tools and documentation for CPD, as well as describing ways of identifying learning needs, undertaking related learning and reinforcing that learning. CPD is closely involved in professional development, service development, self-regulation and external regulation. Any CPD system must allow the individual doctor to learn as that person wishes to learn. It should be 'catered towards individual learning needs and preferences’. The process of managed CPD takes advantage of existing mechanisms within the service and the profession: audit, critical incident methods, peer review, appraisal and other quality assurance measures contribute to needs assessment and to learning and reinforcement of that learning.
