Where to access CPD? - healthcare

There are a broad array of providers, all of whom have strengths and potential weaknesses. The first port of call should be the workplace environment in which you are based. Can the CPD you need be arranged locally through a colleague who could act as tutor, mentor or coach? All high quality health and care providers should be dynamic training environments. For example, when a senior colleague carries out a particularly interesting procedure or comes across an interesting case, are colleagues invited, where appropriate, to observe the procedure as a learning opportunity or engage with the case?
Be sure to explore to see whether your employer has a virtual learning environment (VLE) where key learning resources are held. It is likely that the VLE will house key CPD-related documents, e-learning packages and other learning resources.
Your employer’s intranet pages should set out in-house training opportunities and your employer’s CPD lead or an appropriate HR manager with responsibility for workforce development should be able to provide further information.
Publishers of journals and trade papers often provide free or low cost CPD in areas related to their subject matter. The CPD is often written by experts and can be accessed at any time via e-learning. They may also convene CPD events such as regional study days.
Similarly, health-related charities and patient advocacy groups may provide various forms of face-to-face and e-learning in their areas of interest. Additionally, policy-related organisations, such as The King’s Fund, often provide leading-edge CPD.
Learned societies focused on different specialist areas often convene CPD events, including study days and conferences. It is very important that you identify the UK-based and international learned societies in your areas of interest and look out for events such as webinars or Twitter chats.
Pharmaceutical companies and equipment manufacturers frequently offer very high quality CPD programmes in areas pertaining to their products and services. Most operate within clear ethical frameworks to ensure that the information they present is evidence based, objective and balanced. However, learners still need to be aware that one of the reasons why companies provide CPD is to try to increase the interest in, and the sales of, their products and services.
Universities are major providers of CPD and face-to-face learning can be undertaken at a local university. However, with the emergence of high quality e-learning it is now possible to register for courses of CPD study with universities across the globe. These international CPD events can be powerful ways to challenge your own views and approaches, and seek out new approaches to your work.

How to access CPD: Overcoming barriers
In a perfect world every health and care professional would have unlimited time and funding to access high quality CPD and apply their learning to practice. However, in the real world busy professional’s work, family and free time is increasingly under pressure as life is lived at an increasingly fast pace. It is frequently cited in the literature that health and care professionals are being afforded insufficient time by their employers to undertake meaningful CPD, and the demands on their time away from work are increasing with respect to issues such as child care or looking after aging relatives, meaning that time to undertake CPD away from work is also limited (Joyce and Cowman, 2007). This means that professionals must work collaboratively with their employer to identify CPD that will deliver the greatest return on investment for the time spent learning.
A simple example may be to identify a CPD webinar that could be attended whilst at work, rather than having to commute to a venue. Or could you learn a technique through a series of observations of a senior colleague rather than attending a formal course? At a more sophisticated level, with reference to formal learning, can you consider whether the educational design of the course is likely to support the transfer of learning to practice?Time for reflection
Consider how the recent learning you have undertaken could have been re-designed to become more time efficient.

One constant challenge is how to fund your CPD requirements. Fortunately, most employers have protected funds to support CPD. You will need to find out who controls these funds in your work environment. It is likely, for example, that if you work for the NHS there will be CPD lead for your locality and also for the wider Trust. If you look at the Trust intranet you should be able to identify how CPD budget is allocated in your workplace environment.
Frequently, companies, healthcare charities and patient interest groups offer CPD that is free of charge or heavily subsidised. Beyond that look for other sources of funding that may be available; these might include bursaries from professional bodies, trade unions, university alumni associations and local charitable organisations in your area, such as groups that support the local hospital (e.g. A League of Friends), or perhaps community organisations, such as the Rotary Club or Round Table. Crowd sourcing platforms may also be an option; for example, groups of healthcare professionals could launch a campaign to fund CPD in an area of particular interest to the general public.
Do make sure you explore all the free-of-charge options that may be available. There is now a huge selection of CPD provided by professional bodies, publishers and massive open online courses (MOOC) platforms (e.g. FutureLearn and Coursera). Important organisations, such as the Health Foundation and E-learning for Health, provide various forms of learning resources free of charge.
Obviously, self-funding of CPD can be an option, and at certain stages of your career it may be sensible (if you can afford to do so) to pay yourself for a course.
 For example, if you want to use the learning from the course to enable you to leave your current employer you will have a clear conscience when you come to hand in your notice. Also, on some occasions employers may say, for example, that if they fund your course you will have to pay back the course fees if you leave within a set period of time after completing the course. It is always worth checking to make sure that there are no written or implied terms associated with your employer funding a course.

Lastly, it should be mentioned that many healthcare professionals become frustrated when it appears that CPD opportunities may not be made fairly and equitably accessible to all grades of staff, and to all levels of experience. You need to understand the basis on which your employer makes CPD accessible to its staff. Is it based, for example, on identified need during appraisal or perhaps when senior management identify the vital areas in which CPD should be developed? You may need to make a strong case to justify your involvement in CPD. Do not simply walk into your line manager’s office and ask to go on a course or for a secondment. It will be too easy for them to say no. Instead, link the CPD event to your last appraisal and your development needs, your performance objectives or a current project and how the CPD event will support the project. Provide them with an overview of the CPD event, its costs and the time it will take you away from your role. Most significantly, capture precisely how you think the CPD will change your practice, and how your learning will also support the development of colleagues.Time for reflection
Consider some CPD you would like to engage with. How would you build the case to support your attendance at the event?