CPD is a vital component to maintaining our knowledge and being safe and professional at work. The new scheme that begun in 2018 requires dental nurses to reflect more, spread the CPD activities across the year and focus on growth in their field of practice. We all live very busy lives and managing everything can be tiresome which is why these 3 stress free tips will help you keep up to date with your CPD.
How to keep up to date with CPD
Plan your PDP early
Spare some time at the beginning of your CPD year to organise your PDP (personal development plan). This will save you time and stress in the long term. In this time, you can reflect and think about the areas of knowledge and skills that you wish to progress in the following year. Your PDP can then be adjusted as you identify new needs and areas of development within your field of practice. Setting up timeframes for CPD completion will help spread the workload.
You can take our FREE PDP CPD course to help with this and gain 1 hour verifiable CPD for completing it!
Keep up to date with CPD by being aware of the important topics
GDC has a list of recommended topics for most dental professionals to help your choice of CPD activities. These are not all compulsory, and you should think and do those ones that are most relevant to your own development and field of practice.
These include:
- Medical emergencies
- Disinfection and decontamination
- Radiography and radiation protection
- Legal and ethical issues
- Complaints handling
- Oral cancer: early detection
- Safeguarding children and young people
- Safeguarding vulnerable adults
Set reminders to prompt reflection and completion of CPD
We all live very busy lives and do not always remember to reflect on our work performance.
Using reminders can be a useful tool to focus your reflection. For example, every 2 weeks, set reminders for a time when you know that you will not be disrupted and use this opportunity to think of how your week has been, identifying strengths and weaknesses in your work. You can spend as little as 10 mins and make sure to have a notepad or notes app on your phone to put down ideas. Or you can add this straight to your PDP.
To help your mind you can ask yourself:
- Did anything happen at work where you felt that you could’ve helped more than you did?
- Did you do a procedure and you felt in places a little bit out your depth?
- Is there any new equipment at work that you’d like to gain more knowledge about?
- Any memorable event at work recently?
Now that we talked about reminders where do you find them and how do you use them?
- You could use your calendar in your phone
- You can use reminder app: some examples include Microsoft To Do app, Reminders app on iPhone or any app that you find easy to use
- Or you can a write on the calendar on your fridge at home!
The benefit with using a digital calendar or an app is that you can take it with you anywhere, you only need to set it up once, it will do the work for you indefinitely.
Use reminder tools to help you get CPDs done based on the timeframes set on your PDP:
Reminder tools are useful in conjunction with your PDP as they send you notifications of when to do a CPD activity based on the timeframes set up in your PDP. This way you can chip at your CPD activities little by little throughout the year.
Conclusion:
CPD are such an important part of our compliance with GDC. Small changes like starting your PDP early and supporting your planned CPDs activities through reminders can help you stay on track.