Review and consultation on CPD

• Why are we reviewing our role in CPD?
• What we have done so far
• Consulting on CPD
• Further information 

Doctors must stay up to date and fit to practise. We are exploring how we can help doctors plan, carry out and evaluate CPD relevant to their practice. We want to promote excellence in the profession and support doctors throughout their medical careers.

Why are we reviewing our role in CPD?

Changes in medical education and training as well as regulation mean that it is now time to look again at our guidance on CPD.

Lord Patel’s 2010 report recommended we should review our regulatory role in CPD in order to support doctors to meet the requirements of revalidation and provide high quality care for their patients and the service.

What we have done so far

In September 2010, we began a review of our regulatory role in CPD. The review has been informed by a wide range of views gained through individual meetings, seminars, an online survey and research.

Read about our engagement activities:

• GMC CPD Working Group Terms of Reference (pdf)
• Notes from the CPD seminar 30 March 2011 (pdf)
• Notes from our engagement seminars on medical education, training and development (pdf)
• Summary of our CPD Survey (pdf)
• CPD - the International Perspective: a literature review (pdf)

Read our Final Report on the Review of the GMC's Role in Doctors' Continuing Professional Development (pdf). It explains our conclusions and recommendations for our work in CPD, on which we are now consulting.

Consulting on CPD

We recently ran a consultation on plans for our role in regulating doctors' CPD. The consultation was open from 17 October 2011 to 10 February 2012.

We asked you to comment on three main areas of our work on CPD:

• Our revised CPD guidance that will provide a framework of principles to support doctors' in planning, carrying out and evaluating their CPD. You can have a look at our draft guidance on CPD (pdf).
• Plans to get our CPD guidance into local processes of appraisal and personal development plans.
• How we can share information about key trends, developments in medical practice or professionalism that may be relevant to doctors' future CPD needs.

We will be publishing the results of the consultation in summer 2012.

Download:

• Consultation document and questions (pdf), and annexes (pdf).
• Equality Analysis (pdf) for the consultation
• Consultation document and questions in Welsh (pdf) and annexes in Welsh (pdf).

Further information

Please contact the Education team on 020 7189 5207 or CPDconsultation@gmc-uk.org to:

• Request paper copies of the consultation documents or copies in other languages or alternative formats such as large print;
• Request any other information about the consultation process.