What Is a CPD Portfolio?

Welcome to the CPD Guide! This article is the fifth installation of a series of articles that explain every element of CPD including the CPD period, general CPD requirements, and audits.

What is a CPD portfolio?

A CPD portfolio is a tool that can help healthcare practitioners to record and manage their CPD. In most cases, CPD portfolios keep track of CPD activities that have been performed – and reflected upon – by health practitioners.

CPD portfolios may be externally reviewed annually and are evidence of individual health practitioners maintaining and upholding their CPD requirements during the audit period. Portfolios may also be reviewed externally by the practitioner’s workplace.

Different professions and boards have different CPD requirements, so portfolios need to be representative of these requirements as well as the individual’s learning intention.

Why do you need a CPD portfolio?

A CPD portfolio is essentially a collection of evidence that represents your completion of CPD requirements as set out by your relevant Board/s. With this in mind, you need a CPD portfolio so that it’s easy to locate all evidence of your professional development activities when it comes to reporting on your progress and adherence to your Board’s requirements.

How do you make a CPD portfolio?

More often than not, if you’ve been tracking your CPD progress you’ve been keeping a CPD portfolio of some sort. Nowadays there are technologies that can help you in managing your portfolio in simple and efficient ways.

Some tools even incorporate the entire CPD process within their technology for a more robust representation of your CPD progress, as opposed to just documenting activities you completed and when they were completed.

What do you put into a CPD portfolio?

A CPD portfolio should contain the following:

• Written learning plan to target learning needs
• Find out how to create a great learning plan here: Five Elements of an Effective Learning Plan
• CPD activities completed and recorded by the practitioner
• Find out what can count towards your CPD here: What counts as CPD?
• Written reflections of the activities relating back to learning needs
• Find out how to write a great reflection here: How do you reflect effectively?
• Evidence of completion for each activity compiled in a coherent manner to present for audits
• Find out the ins and outs of an audit here: What is an audit?

Ausmed’s portfolio features the ability to upload, organise and manage each of the above elements of a CPD portfolio. To find an example CPD portfolio upon which you can base your own, have a look at Ahpra’s example here: Ahpra - CPD Portfolio Example

What next?

Once you’ve read this article on CPD portfolios, return to the CPD Guide to find out more about your required professional development. We recommend reading ‘What is an audit?’ next.