Continuing professional development (CPD)

Hello, my name is Jenny Soros Cooktop and I'm the lead for postgraduate education at the RCVS and I will be presenting this webinar, One CPD webinar. I have my colleague with me Joanne Stetsel who will be covering your questions and we also have our lead developer Felix Michael for any technical questions that I'm unable to answer.

So I know you're all really busy so thank you so much for taking the time to attend this webinar or give me a chance just to show you how to get started using One CPD but also for me to understand any questions that you have and hopefully we can address any concerns as part of this workshop.

So I'll show you how One CPD works, give you an overview of both the app and the web version and I'll try to give you some tips of how you can manage your CPD. And by the end of this workshop I hope you'll feel confident in using One CPD to plan your learning and development for 2021. So this webinar is developed for anyone who's a new user to One CPD or has not used it before so you don't have to have any prior knowledge or any technical knowledge. I'll go through everything step by step but we also have a webinar tonight at 7 for more experienced users.

So as part of this webinar I will show you how to access One CPD so how to log in for the first time and then the three main sections that's the plan, record and reflect. So I'll demonstrate each section and then we'll go through any questions covering that topic. So this webinar is planned for around an hour but it depends on how many questions we get and we have received questions from you as part of the registration process and we'll be covering those as we go along but you can also ask questions as part of this webinar. So you'll see the black toolbar towards the right, there's a two speech bubbles with a question mark so if you click on that one you can just type in your question and don't worry, no one else can see your question and we won't mention your name. I'll just go to my colleague Joanne and if we don't have time to cover your question as part of this webinar we will collect all questions and answers as part of a frequently asked document and that will be sent out to you. And I know that some of you have not recorded your CPD online before so this session is recorded so you can go back and review it at a later date and we'll also send you an evaluation form and as part of that you can book a one-to-one session with me so you can discuss your circumstances or if there's anything you feel that you need a bit further information about.

Okay, so to get started we have a welcome message from our council member and chair of education committee Sue Paterson about how she's using One CPD.

Sue Paterson's Video Message

Hi, I'm Sue Adelson. I'm currently chair of education at the Royal College. I also sit on the CPD compliance panel. My day job is I'm a dermatologist and so CPD is really important to me because I'm a specialist. A lot of my CPD is driven by clinical need of course and that's where I find One CPD really useful. However, if I'm honest I struggle a little bit to use it and if it wasn't for my children I probably wouldn't be able to use it at all. My clinical need is I often see a difficult case, I'll go away, I want to find out a little bit more about that. I've not been able to manage this as well as I have done. Whether there's been any new drugs for example. I might have colleagues, I might look at a podcast, I might read a journal article and then once I've done that what I then find really useful on the app is that you can go and reflect on it and I find using the recording button is really good. So I'm not great, I'm not very disciplined but I think the recording button is really great and I can reflect and just really scramble onto the phone about why I've found the research I've done useful and how it's going to help me manage the case perhaps next time I see something like that.

The problem I have though is I'm not great at the planning bit, I'm not great at the recording bit but the reflection bit I think I probably got down as a fine art. So I need a lot of help really as to how I can do a much more sort of joined up approach to One CPD app because I think I'm not really getting the best out of it. What I do love about it is the little green bar along the top which is really satisfying because it moves across as you create your CPD. So we all know how important CPD is for us as professionals so it's great to see as you do it during the year you see a little green line move from left to right which is a really nice reassuring fact that you're actually doing all your CPD. So I'm really looking forward to these little instruction webinars that we're going to have because hopefully it will mean I'm going to be able to make the very best out of the app and it should make my life a little bit easier when it comes to actually recording the information.

Back to Jenny

Great, thank you Sue and I'll try my best to make your life a little bit easier.

So first of all let me tell you a little bit about One CPD. It's been developed in-house with our RCVS development team. It was introduced in January 2020 and we trialed it last year. So the One CPD has replaced the Professional Development Record, the PDR, but if you used a PDR before to record any activities they will automatically be transferred to One CPD. So the first time you log in they'll be there. And One CPD is really developed to help vets and to help veterinary nurses to plan, record and reflect on your CPD and to make it as easy as possible.

And I know from speaking to many veterinary surgeons and nurses one of the biggest hurdles is just to log in and so there's a few different options for you to how to do that. If you go to our website rcvs.org.uk you'll see at the top you'll see my account and One CPD. So if you click on One CPD you'll come to this page. It'll give you the options for how to log in. So One CPD is available as an app so you can choose to use the app or you can use the web version. You can use either or both, they're linked so it doesn't matter.

If you want to use the web version you just click access One CPD web version and then you'll come to the login page. You don't have to register to use One CPD, you already have login details. It's the same as for my accounts where you do your annual renewal each year. If you're unsure of your password or username there's a link just underneath the login button so you can reset your password, remind yourself of your username and you're also able to login to my account to change your username.

If you want to use the app you go to the app store or to Google Play and you search One CPD - so that's the number one and CPD in one word - and then you download an app just as you would any other apps. And again the username and password is the same for my account so that means that all your RCVS accounts will have the same username and password just to make it easy for you.

And then once you have able to log in you'll see the home screen. So I'm hoping that this will work now, I can share my phone with you.

So I hope you can see my phone now and so this is the home screen. I'll have your name at the top, you'll see how many hours you have recorded that year and this is the bar that Sue Paterson was talking about for all to turn green once you've reached the requirement. So you'll see just under the bar there's a button, the blue button says 2020. So if I click on that one I can change the year I'm viewing so I might want to go back and view how many hours I recorded in 2018. And there you'll see the number of hours then I'll go back to 2020.

So on the home screen you'll also have any activities that you've planned or any past activities so I'll give you an overview of any recordings you have. And in the top left hand corner you'll see the three lines that's you can click that to get some help and to send us feedback. And then at the bottom you'll see the three main sections that we'll cover today - the plan, record and reflect.

So Joe, do we have any questions so far?

Q&A Session - Getting Started

We have some questions that people submitted during their registration. So the first question is can One CPD be accessed from my smartphone and tablet, can I use it on my desktop computer?

Yes, so as I mentioned you can download the app and have that on your phone or on your iPad. It works both on iPhones and Androids but you can also choose to use the web version. So you can use the web version on your phone, on your iPad or on your desktop and they're all linked together so whatever you record on one device will be available on all others.

Ah so that leads really well into the next question. Somebody else asked why does the CPD I record in the app not appear in the desktop version of One CPD?

So they are linked so as long as you have recorded it and you can see it in the app it should also be available on the website. The interface is a little bit different on the web version so I'll show you how you can search for activities but if you still can't find it, the best thing to do is just use the help menu and send us some feedback and me and my team will investigate it further.

Thank you. This is the final question that was submitted pre-event. If I attend CPD hosted in another country such as a webinar, can I count this as CPD?

Yeah, the requirement is really flexible so you can attend CPD in any language or any format but you do need to record it in English so that if we need to access your record we're able to view it and see what you have been doing.

Okay great. We've got a few questions coming through. The first question is does it link to improved CPD records like revalidation?

I don't know if you mean the annual renewal or if you... so if you mean the annual renewal it is. It'll be easier for you to renew so when you complete your annual declaration form, if you're compliant using One CPD that box will already be ticked for you because we know that you're compliant.

Okay great. We've got a question that's come through about reflection. Once we get to the reflections section we will come back to those questions so I hope that's okay. We're going to stick to answering questions immediately after the section that Jenny has demonstrated.

We have another question. I've performed and recorded my CPD. Will I need to try using CPD online? Will I need to transfer it to my RCVS record or will that be enough for this year?

It's up to you how you want to record your CPD. So if you want to start using One CPD today you don't have to transfer any previous records, that's fine.

There's a general question about what counts as CPD. Do meetings with colleagues to discuss cases count towards CPD?

Yeah absolutely. I'll talk a bit later on what you can count as CPD but yeah basically any learning or development that's relevant to you as a professional can count as CPD.

Great. Another question. I work as a vet in government in the civil service. We already have a system for planning, recording and reflecting on CPD and training. Should I be using One CPD in addition to this?

Well it's up to you. I hope that after this webinar you'll find that One CPD can meet your learning needs but it's not mandatory to use One CPD until 2022 and even then there'll be a chance for you to contact us to ask if you can have an exception to that.

Okay. There's a question around general CPD. If I do not manage to cover the annual hours, what happens in that case?

So if you're struggling with CPD and you haven't met the hours for this year, when you do your annual declaration next year you need to declare that you're non-compliant and then you might be included in a CPD audit where we check your records and see if you have a plan to meet the requirement for the next year. So the most important thing is always try to have a plan for what you're going to do next.

Great. So you've had one compliment about your Christmas tree, so non-CPD related, and that looks to be the end of the questions throughout around that first section.

Planning Section

Excellent, thank you for that. So let me start with planning. And I think when we all think of planning we think of the formal long-term planning so where you assess if you have any skills or knowledge gaps and then develop objectives to meet your learning needs. I think that's really important. It's good just to stop and think about what you want to do or what you need to do and also think if there's any opportunities within your workplace.

But there's also the more day-to-day planning that we do as part of our job. So there might be that you're doing some research as part of a case-based research or you have attended a CPD activity and you're motivated to learn more about it or for example as part of COVID government guidelines you need to read up on any changes. So that could be things that you can just add to your plan.

And to give you an example, for example if you're in practice you're having a consultation with a client and they're asking you lots of questions about their pet's diabetes and you're able to answer them but you feel a bit uncomfortable because it alerts you to the fact that you're a bit rusty on the subject. So just make a quick plan. So you think okay what I'm going to do is I'm going to read some journals to find out latest evidence, there's a webinar that I think will be relevant but there's also a new graduate working in my practice, I'll have chat to them and see if there's any new approaches to treatment that I'm not aware of. So you've made a quick plan and instead of just keeping it all in your head you can just quickly type it into One CPD and you'll have it there so you can go back to it.

So planning shouldn't really be something that you do in January and then forget about for the next 12 months. It works best as a dynamic and ongoing process. But of course there's no denying the value of unplanned CPD. CPD activities there wasn't in your original plan can be really useful learning opportunity and it may even provide motivate you to learn more that you can add to your learning plan if relevant.

Okay so let me show you how you can plan using One CPD. So at the bottom there you'll see plan, record and reflect. So if I click on plan we will, you'll get to the plan home page. At the top you'll see active and completed so you can have up to 10 active objectives and it's really easy to add a new one. So you just click on the green button plus and it'll ask you just for some basic information. So I'll add an objective that will be relevant to all of you I hope. So it's to learn more about One CPD.

Great, so that's the title and then if you want to you can add some description. Sometimes you might feel that the title is enough, I don't need any further information and that's fine. I find it quite useful because I forget otherwise. And using my phone, what I like about it is that I don't have to type, I can just dictate. So you'll see on my phone next to the spacebar that's a microphone. So if I click on that one I can just talk into my phone and it just magically transforms it into text. So I'll just click on that and talk into my phone and hopefully this will work.

So I will attend the One CPD webinar and talk to my colleagues about how they are using One CPD.

Quick and easy. And then there's a due date. Again you don't have to fill it in but I find it's good to keep myself on track. So I'll choose, I'll say I need a, if not a year, a month to complete this. So I'll put the 9th of January 2021 and you can go back to amend this if you want to. And then once I'm happy I'll just save the objective and you'll see at the top there there's a little message that says objective recorded successfully.

And then in the list you'll see that this objective has been saved. So at the moment I don't have any hours recorded against my objective and if I click edit objective I can just edit any information, I can mark it as complete or I can delete it. So I'll just click on the red cross and then once I'm happy I just click on the home arrow and it'll take you back to the home screen again. And you'll see on the home screen there you have future activities. You can also use the record function to record any activities that you're planning for the future and I'll show you how to record it. So it's the same functionalities to record retrospectively and future activities.

Joe, any questions about planning?

Q&A - Planning

We've had a couple of questions that were submitted as part of registration. How do I plan in advance for example planning to read articles or books without having to enter an exact date?

Okay so you can just add objectives and add all that information in the description. If you want to add it so it appears as the future activity you do have to put in a provisional date but what you can do is you can go in and amend it at a later date.

Thank you. The next question is do I always need to follow the cycle of plan, do, record and reflect in order?

No, so the outcomes based cycle is a plan, do, record and reflect and it is a cycle because you don't have to go through it step by step - plan, record, reflect. And sometimes you might start with reflection and then plan something or other times there'll be a CPD activity this is not part of your plans, you'll start at recording. It really should be an ongoing process but you don't have to follow each step every step each time.

Thank you. We're on two questions that have come in live now. So the first one is how does recording the planning part work if the CPD is last minute, for example lunch and learn that you only find out about on the day?

So it's up to you. If you want, you don't have to record it before the event. You can choose to just record it on the day or record it retrospectively. It's up to you.

The next question is, is the plan section mandatory?

As I say, you don't have to use it all the time. I think it's useful to try to have some of your objectives and think about what you're doing, especially those informal plan opportunities to plan, just so that you don't have it all in your head. Just put it down on One CPD and you'll have it all in one place.

Okay. The next question. It might be silly - no silly questions - but what is the difference between CPD and One CPD?

So One CPD is the recording platform, so that's the RCVS recording platform and CPD is continual professional development. So that is the learning and development that you do as part of being a professional.

So this question is interesting. That looked quick and simple when you spoke and it typed. I don't have that and I spend hours doing this. Do we get credit for all of this time? I think the question is do we get credit for the typing, I think that's what the question is.

Well it depends on if you spend a lot of time planning your CPD, that, you know, that could, and when you reflect on it that could be part of your CPD but it will leave you that to your professional judgment really and it depends on how much time you spend on it.

And the question also asks it looks quick and simple when you've spoken it typed, I don't have that.

So that feature is part of the app isn't it?

No, so this is not a part of the app, it's just part of iPhones and it's, you can do it on Android as well.

The next question. Once you've planned your objectives, once you've done the learning, how do you record this?

So I'll cover that just in a few minutes time.

Great. Is there a minimum number of hours that should be dedicated to clinical CPD rather than management related or other forms?

No, the CPD should be relevant to you in your role. So if you're not doing clinical practice then you don't have to do CPD that's clinical. So really it depends on what's relevant to you. So CPD shouldn't be just a tick box exercise to what you need to do and what's relevant to your role.

As a first time user at what date do I start or how far back do I go in the past?

That's up to you. You can just choose to start today and that's fine but you can also record things retrospectively if you want to.

Okay. It's quite a specific question this one. I am an ACVP diplomat and have to provide extensive detail by the ECVP re-registration requirements to this regulator. I also use this to continue my specialist status. Will I need to use One CPD in addition or is there an exemption?

I think I'm not sure about the specialist criterias but I think you can send in your CPD as part of your specialist application but I think I'll have to just check that with my colleagues who are experts in their specialist applications. So perhaps just send me an email afterwards and I'll cover it and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Thank you. There's another question. Does this link to the professional development phase records and the CPD allowance from that?

No, so One CPD is separate from the PDP but once you've completed PDP you can add 35 hours of CPD into One CPD.

Okay. Is there any other questions Joe?

Sorry there's a few more. How do I get One CPD onto my phone? Does it update the stuff that got recorded by the old platform automatically?

Yes, anything that you recorded using the PDR will automatically have been transferred to One CPD. And the other questions that have come in refer to sections that we're about to cover so I will come back to those at the end of each section.

Recording Section

Thank you. Okay so let's go over record. So most of you will be familiar with recording your CPD even if you haven't done it online or using One CPD. And we do get a lot of questions about what can you count as CPD and how many hours can you count.

So as I said the RCVS CPD requirements is really flexible. Any learning or development that you feel is relevant to you as a professional you can count. And we just measure it in time. So if you spend half an hour reading you can count that as half an hour of CPD and it's the same if you attend a course for half an hour, you count that's half an hour of CPD. So it's no different depending on the type of activity that you undertake.

So recording it is easy. I'll just go to the app and click record. And you'll see on the home screen on the right hand side there's four little squares. So you can type, if you have a QR code you can click on that one and scan in your QR code and you'll just populate the record for you. But it's really quick to do anyway. So now I'll just... so this one will be a One CPD webinar. And duration, we're planning it for one hour. So as you can see you can choose here hours and minutes and then done. The date, and so again you scroll and choose the date. So the 9th of December. Great.

And sometimes you might attend activities that are longer than one date so if you press the plus sign you can choose an end date. So for example if you're on a congress for five days you can choose the 14th of December. But since that's not applicable for us I'll just remove that option.

And then you have the activity types and so we have three different subsections. So you have the formal which is more of the traditional types of CPD - you have the courses, congresses, distance learning. And there's also the workplace so that's case discussions, peer feedback or observation. You can also use other if you feel that no category is suitable. And then the self-directed learning such as reading or research. But this is a webinar I'll choose distance learning, webinar.

And then objective, so here is where you can actually link your objectives to your record. And if you press the plus sign you can add an objective here as well. So you might, you can just add title and then go back and add a description or you can add all the information. And once you save that I'll be in the planning section of the app. But as I already have an objective I'll just choose that from the list, done. So that's really quick and easy to do.

And then there's a note section just at the bottom where you can put in any additional notes you have or anything else. And then you'll see the blue button it says add attachment. So if I click on that one I can choose to take a photo or choose a photo from your gallery. I can record an audio or add an attachment. And I think this is where One CPD becomes really beneficial because it's not just an app to keep track of your hours, you can actually use it as your learning journal.

So that means that for example if you recorded your activity before the event you can go back and then as you're in the webinar, in the lecture, you could take a picture of a slide, you can add an audio or any notes as you go along and then just save the activity. And afterwards if you receive the certificate you can just take a picture of it again and just add it to your record and then you'll have everything in one place.

So once I'm happy I'll just click save and then you'll see the activity recorded successfully. And then in today's activity you'll see One CPD webinar there in blue and you can also see that my bar has turned green so I'm now compliant.

Do we have any other questions Joe before we move on to reflection?

Q&A - Recording

Gently there are quite a few questions. So the first question I think this covers quite a few queries that have come in. What counts as CPD? Can I count reading articles in the Vet Times? Can I record self-directed learning such as reading research and lecture preparation? And there's also a question that has come in live - can planning, researching, developing and recording of online lectures count as CPD?

Yes, and again anything that's relevant to you can count. So I think there's a lot of confusion about reading. And in 2016 we removed the undocumented reading, so 10 hours for vets or five hours for nurses. But reading can still be an excellent form of CPD. It just means you need to have a few, just some evidence to support your record. And using One CPD that's really easy. You could take a picture of any notes, you could take a picture of the articles or add any information like that. But the best way to evidence your CPD really is to reflect on it, just to add a few notes of what you've learned and what impact that has on you.

Okay, there's a more specific question. When I provide training for others, what do I record for my own CPD - time prepping the training or time delivering it or both?

Okay, so normally we would say that your learning would take place while preparing the presentation, the lecture or the paper. So you can record the time you take preparing it because that's where your learning normally takes place.

Thank you. Can I log the courses that are longer than 35 hours, i.e. longer than the total required for the year?

Yeah sure, there's no limit on how many hours you can record. And for example if you're doing a longer course you might want to choose to just record it by modules - you add some in one year and some in another year. We leave that completely up to you.

Thank you. At the end of the year do we have to do anything to submit our CPD hours or are they submitted automatically in One CPD?

So we don't, you don't have to do anything to submit your hours. We don't review them so we will only ask for your records if you're part of an audit or maybe as a PSS inspection. But using One CPD will make it easier for you to complete the annual declaration process. So if you're compliant in One CPD the box, the CPD box in the declaration form will be ticked for you.

Right. When recording a CPD topic, can you add two separate dates for an entry rather than from and to dates?

I'm not sure I understand. You could only add, you only need to add one date and you can add the end date if you want to but you can't add two different dates. There will be two separate activities I think.

The next question is can I record CPD for practical activities such as surgical procedures?

Yeah, any activities you can count. So there'll be, you can do it as part of the workplace procedures. And if you feel that a category is not suitable you can use other.

Great. What's the maximum amount of reading that can be recorded as CPD? I thought there was a limit now.

So again there's no limit as long as you provide some evidence. So we used to have the undocumented hours, there was a maximum of 10 hours, but now all your CPD can be reading as long as you just provide some evidence. So either a few notes or even better just reflect on your CPD to show what you've learned and how that impacts you.

Thank you. The next question is does learning about CPD count as CPD, for example reviewing the how to CPD podcasts at the RCVS website?

Yes sure, as long as you're learning from it and it's beneficial to you then you can count it as CPD.

Okay, the next question is I feel a bit confused. We renew our RCVS membership on the 30th of March and CPD ends at the last day of the calendar year. How are the hours of continuous education counted?

Okay, so the CPD is counted in the calendar year so from January to December. So when vets renew their registration in March they are confirming that they met the requirement for the last year and that's the same for nurses when they do it in November. They're confirming that they met the requirement for the previous year.

Thank you. The next question. If you're at a congress should you put each session on as a separate entry or just lump it all under that congress?

It's up to you. You might find that it's useful to reflect on separate entries because then you can add pictures or audio to it and reflect on it. But if you want to you can also record it as a block and then just reflect on what you learned as a whole.

The next question is, is this now obligatory or is there a date by which it will become obligatory?

So the outcomes based model becomes mandatory in 2022 but I would recommend you to start using it now so that you feel familiar with it and really for you to get the most out of your CPD.

I think you've covered this but it's probably no harm covering it again. Are there maximum limits for different types of CPD, e.g. a maximum five hours for webinars?

No there's no maximum. But you're all professionals, you know how to meet your learning and development needs.

The next question. Can I log a non-certified event I've attended?

Yep, we don't accredit or recognize any CPD. So as long as you feel that it's beneficial to you then you can record it as CPD as long as you just record it and evidence it properly.

Okay. How, I think we can cover this probably next in the next section but I'll ask anyway in case it's relevant for this one. How do I as a practice manager log in to check CPD records for our vet staff?

So you can't log in to check the CPD records. It's an individual record but I'll show you how vets or vet nurses can share their CPD with their CPD report.

Thank you. How many hours of CPD are needed this year and is it the same number of hours required for full-time and part-time vets?

Yeah, so due to COVID we have reduced the CPD requirement for this year so it's 26 hours for vets and 11 hours for nurses. Normally it's 35 hours or 15 hours but as long as you stay on the register, the practicing register, the requirement is the same for everyone. So it doesn't matter if you work full-time or part-time. But if you, vets can go non-practicing, so if you go on a non-practicing register you don't have to undertake any CPD during that time period.

Okay, the final question for this section. Again it's about what counts as CPD. Does having vet students seeing practice count as CPD?

So mentoring vet students can be a great form of CPD as long as you've learned something from it.

Great, so I think we've come to the end of those questions for this.

Reflection Section

Okay, so let's go over to reflect. And I know that this is something that many people feel a bit unsure of how to do it and how much information is needed. So the aim of reflection is really for you to think about the outcomes of the learning activities that you have attended. So think about what did you learn and how is that going to impact your practice or your duties.

So a reflective note doesn't have to cover all the details of the experience, just focus on the most important things and you can always go back at a later point if needed. But it's best to record your reflections on a regular basis because you will forget things as you go along and also practice makes perfect. So you will become more familiar with the process.

But reflection isn't, you know, one size fits all. What works for someone might not work for you. So some people prefer to reflect on their own, others with a colleague or a mentor or you might want to do it as part of a group activity. And group reflections or conversations can work really well, like give you some new ideas or improve your patient care.

And reflecting that you didn't learn anything from a CPD activity is a valid conclusion. It will help to guide any future learning that you do and make you realize why that CPD activity wasn't beneficial to you.

So just to give an example, you might have been to a webinar about a new drug. So as part of that webinar you learn about the drug and how to use it. So you go back into your workplace and then a great way to assess it is to reflect on it. So does it work better than any other alternative? Is it quicker? Are there less side effects? And what's the client feedback?

And then so this is a type of reflection that will work really well doing this as a group reflection because then you can just share your experience. And that could be in a formal just staff meeting but it could also be as part of a team meeting. And what's really good about that is that that discussion and that conversation can then count as CPD for your colleagues who might not have been able to attend the original CPD activity.

Okay, so let me show you how it works in One CPD. So you press the reflection button and it'll take you to the reflection home page. So first you'll have to do, complete and all. So you'll see our One CPD webinar there. So I'll just click on that one and then it'll give you the options for how to reflect.

So just as there's many ways that you can reflect, you can also record it in different ways using One CPD. So you have the guided reflections which is three prompts to guide you through the process. And these prompts were developed as part of our CPD pilots. Volunteers felt that it was easy just to answer these questions rather than just having a blank piece of paper in front of them. So let me just show you quickly how you could reflect using the guided reflection.

So starting with how did this CPD relate to your learning objectives and plan? And again I'll use the dictate button so I'll just press the microphone. "The webinar was part of my plan to learn more about One CPD."

Great. What are the key things that you learned? Okay, "so I learned how to plan, record and reflect effectively on the go."

Great. And what impact has the CPD undertaken had on you as a professional or in your role? "So I'm able to record and reflect activities at work and it's easier for me to keep up with the CPD requirement."

Great. So then there you have it, you've reflected. So you don't have to complete all of these questions if you feel that it's not relevant to the activity that you've undertaken. You might just choose to do one or two. And what you can do is you might be able to answer the key things you learned just after the activity and then go back and think about what impact it's had.

But if you want to you can also use a more flexible approach to reflection. So if you press free you'll see here's just a note, open text box. You can just put in notes, anything you want. Or you can add an attachment. So you can take a photo, so that might be a photo of any notes you've taken. Just take a photo, add it to your One CPD and you have reflected.

Or as Sue Paterson was talking about before, if you press record audio you'll just record your voice. So that makes it really easy. So it means you don't have to go back to your desk and then do reflection as a separate part. You can just add your reflections there and then or you might choose to do it together with a colleague. So you can record the audio while you're having a cup of coffee and talking about your reflections or as part of a team meeting. I think that makes it really easy. It means it doesn't have to take any up any additional time or it won't be any paperwork.

And the benefits to actually recording your reflections rather than just doing it in your head is that you can go back and then review it at a later date. So once I'm happy I'll just save reflections and then I'll click to go back to the home page.

Okay, so that's the three main sections. I don't know if we have any questions about reflections before I show you the web version.

Q&A - Reflection

We do have quite a few questions about reflection and the first one being is reflection compulsory?

So the outcome CPD model will become mandatory from 2022 but as I said, try to make practice during reflection now because the more you use it the easier it will become. And you know the purpose of CPD is really to add value to your service and the care that you provide. So it is valuable to reflect on any changes resulting from your learning and see if it's made a difference.

Thank you. Quite a few questions around how much detail do you have to go into during reflection, how in depth does it need to be?

It doesn't have to be in depth. Just a few details, it could just be bullet points or just a few notes. It's whatever you feel works best for you and what's beneficial to you.

Thank you. How many hours should be recorded for reflection per number of hours of CPD?

Does that mean... I'm not sure. You don't have to record any additional hours of reflection. So once you record an activity you just, it will appear in your reflection page and then you can just add reflection to your CPD activity. If that's not quite what you mean you can send me an email afterwards and we can discuss it a bit further.

Thank you. How do we, do we have to fill in reflections for previous CPD logged before 2020?

No, it's up to you if you feel that it's beneficial to do so. Just add your reflective notes. You can but you could start reflecting today.

The next question is an interesting one. Reflection doesn't help in my clinical work beyond what we do naturally, i.e. did it work, was it safe and simple, would I use it again?

Exactly, that that's a reflection for you. It is a natural process and things that we probably go over in our head. And I think that's what we try to with One CPD is just to make it really easy. So if you can just record those audios there and then it's no additional paperwork so it doesn't take up any additional time.

There's a question around are we going to be marked on this? Might my standard of reflection not be good enough?

No, we're not going to go in and mark your reflections now but it will be mandatory to use reflection as part of the CPD requirement.

Are reflections seen by others?

If your record is audited, it depends on what you mean. If you share your record for a CPD audit we will be able to see your reflection but no one else within the RCVS such as the PSS team or the ProfCon team will be able to see your reflections unless you share them with them.

Do you have to reflect on every activity you record?

It's up to you. Sometimes you might feel that that is not beneficial to reflect but I would recommend you to just to practice using the process. And sometimes your reflections might be really short and say this CPD wasn't relevant to me or that I didn't learn anything from it and that's fine.

So there's another question you've just answered but it might be useful to cover it. Who has access to our reflective comments and can this have legal implications?

So I can send you some further information about our privacy policy but basically we wouldn't use your reflective comments in any in any RCVS capacity. So you can feel safe in reflecting on One CPD.

I think that covers the reflection questions that have come in.

Web Version Demo

Brilliant. Okay so I know not all of you want to use the app or might have a smartphone and so I hope I can change my screen into the web version.

Okay, so I hope you can see the web version. So once you log in you'll see this is what the home page looks like. So it's quite similar to the app. You'll have at the top here you'll have the main sections - plan, record and reflect. What's different in the web version is that you can produce a report. So you can view a summary of your activities by clicking annual CPD report blue button just under the bar there.

Okay, so then it gives you a choice of all the years of CPD you recorded. So I'll choose to do 2020 and 2019 and then I'll just view report. And so that will produce a really nice report for you and a summary of the activities you have recorded for that year. So you'll see the date, activity type, topic, hours. At the top you'll see how many hours I've completed for the years I chose as part of this report. And for my year 2020 you'll see the summary here of what I've recorded and then at the bottom there's a summary for that particular year.

And then you could choose just go back in case you just want to view it or you can download a PDF report if you want to share it with employer or a PSS inspector for example.

Sometimes you might want to share a bit more detailed information so you can choose export my data. And then if you export CPD activities and reflections it will export all your notes and all your reflections into an Excel spreadsheet.

And then here is also request CPD pause. So you can, in exceptional circumstances or planned periods away from work such as parental leave or sabbatical leave, you might feel that you need to stay on the practicing register but you're struggling with your CPD. So you can request a pause, you can request a pause for up to six months. So you just click on request pause and fill in the application form. And then your CPD hours for that year will be calculated pro rata.

And another difference to the app is you have my activity. So if you click on that you'll see a breakdown of activities. So you have the same tabs as in the app - past, today and future - but here you can search. So you can search for topics for example. There was a question before about someone who couldn't see their activity in the website so you could search for that. You could also search for dates. So for example if I want to search for CPD that I've done in the past month I'll just do that and then search. And then you'll see all the activities here. So you can click on it to edit it and you'll see the speech bubble. And if there's a tick in this means reflection has been done and you can also delete it if you need to.

Okay, I think that is everything for the web version. And I'll just go back to my presentation.

So is there any more questions Joe? Are we almost running out of time?

Final Q&A

There are a few more questions so hopefully we'll be able to cover most of those. The first one is if I register for a webinar, is this automatically recorded?

No. What you can do, you can, they can produce QR codes and then it will automatically pre-populate your records. But if not you'll have to record it using One CPD.

Okay. Similar question. Will there be a CPD certificate for today?

You don't have to have a certificate to prove your CPD. So I would advise you to just to reflect on what you learned today and that's the best evidence you could have for your CPD.

The next question is can we download reports from One CPD for providing support evidence to specialist colleges?

Yeah, so you can download the Excel spreadsheet. It will give you all the information, all your notes and all your reflections all in one spreadsheet.

Will employers be able to request a copy of CPD records and reflections?

We would never provide employers with your individual records but you could choose to supply them with the reports I showed you - either the PDF reports which just includes your activities or the Excel reports which includes more information.

Thank you. Another couple of questions about what counts as CPD. Well-being and mental health topics count?

Yeah absolutely. So whatever is relevant to you as a professional person. So it doesn't all just have to be the clinical part. It could be Mind Matters, it could be business management. It's whatever is relevant to you as a professional person.

Can I record in January/February 2021 for my 2020 CPD or does it need to be done before the end of the year?

I would recommend you to try to record it this year and record as you go along but you can retrospectively add activities.

If in 2020 you've been non-practicing for six months do you require to do the same hours of CPD?

No, so the CPD requirement for this year will then be calculated pro rata. So you'll do half of the requirement if you're only on the register for six months.

Thanks. There's a quite a specific question. If you're learning in the practice with a mentor can you take pictures or videos of the case you're dealing with to keep on One CPD without an owner's agreement?

I think that we'll have to, you'll have to check with your workplace about the privacy agreements with your clients.

Okay. Did I understand correctly when doing a certificate, can modules done one year be recorded the following year?

You need to record the module at the time learning takes place. But if you're doing a course that stretches over two years for example you could record some modules in one year and some in the other year.

Okay and the final question. I sometimes learn from seeing cases being shared and discussed on social media. The veterinary bit will only be a bit of the time I've spent on social media. Do I just estimate a veterinary amount of social media time over a day or week?

Yeah exactly. We leave it to your professional judgment to determine how much time you feel you can count this as professional development. So we do trust you.

And I think that's the limit of the time that we've got questions free to answer live.

Closing

Thank you. Okay great. So as I said we will collate all the questions and provide answers for them. And we will send out an evaluation form after this session so that you can book in a one-to-one session with me if you want to discuss anything further. But I just want to thank you so much for attending today and thank you for all asking questions as we go along.

So welcome to this one CPD webinar for experience users. My name is Jenny Soroskogtapp and I'm the lead for postgraduate education within the RCVS. I will be presenting this webinar together with my colleague Joanne Stetsel who will be covering all your questions and we also have our lead developer Felix Misho with us for any technical questions that I'm unable to answer.

Overview

Okay, so I know you're all really busy so thank you so much for taking the time to attend this webinar. Give me a chance to show you how to use one CPD and the main features but also an opportunity for me to understand any questions that you have and hopefully we can address any concerns as part of this webinar. I'll give you an overview of how the app works and how the web version works and show you some of the main features. I'm hoping to give you a few tips on how you can manage your CPD and to make you feel more confident in using one CPD to plan your learning and development for 2021. This workshop is really focused around what you need so don't be afraid to ask any questions.

Home Page

As part of this webinar I'll show you the home page of one CPD, the planning, the record and reflect. So I'll demo the sections and then I'll answer any questions that you have.

Questions

We're planning for this webinar to be around an hour but it depends on how many questions you have. We've received some questions as part of the registration process so we'll be covering those as we go along but please do ask questions during this webinar. You'll see the toolbar and to the right there's a speech bubble with a question mark in, so if you just click on that and then type in your question. Don't worry, no one else can see your question or your name. I'll just go to my colleague Joe who will be asking me the questions. We might not be able to cover all questions as part of this webinar so we'll collect all the questions and then send them out as a frequently asked questions. You'll get all the questions and answers in writing. After this webinar we'll also send out an evaluation form and as part of that evaluation form you can book a one-to-one session with me if you feel that I didn't answer your question or you'd like some further information. I'd like to reassure you that this webinar is recorded so you can go back and review any sections that you're not sure of.

Okay, so to get us started we have a welcome message from council member and chair of the education committee Sue Paterson who will be talking about her experience of using one CPD.

Sue Paterson

Hi I'm Sue Paterson. I'm currently chair of education at the Royal College. I also sit on the CPT compliance panel. My day job is I'm a dermatologist and so CPD is really important to me because I'm a specialist. A lot of my CPD is driven by clinical need of course and that's where I find one CPD really useful. However if I'm honest I struggle a little bit to use it and if it wasn't for my children I probably wouldn't be able to use it at all. My clinical need is I can see a difficult case, I'll go away, I want to find out a little bit more about that. I have not been able to manage it as well as I have done whether there's been any new drugs for example. I might have colleagues, I might look at a podcast, I might read a journal article and then once I've done that what I then find really useful on the app is actually, and I find using the recording button is really good because I'm not great, I'm not very disciplined but I think the recording button is really great and I can reflect and just really just ramble onto the phone about why I've found the research I've done useful and how it's going to help me manage the case perhaps next time I see something something like that. The problem I have though is I'm not great at the planning bit, I'm not great at the recording bit, but the reflection bit I think I've probably got down as a fine art. So I need a lot of help really as to how I can do a much more sort of joined up approach to one CPD because I think I'm not really getting the best out of it.

What I do love about it is the little green bar along the top which is really satisfying because it moves across as you play your CPD. So we all know how important CPD is for us as professionals so it's great to see as you do it during the year a little green line move from left to right which is a really nice reassuring fact that you're actually going over your all your CPD. So I'm really looking forward to these little instruction webinars that we're going to have because hopefully it will mean I'm going to be able to make the very best out of the app and it should make my life a little bit easier when it comes to actually recording the information.

What is 1CPD

Brilliant thank you so much Sue and I'll try my best to make your life a little bit easier. So first of all let me tell you a little bit about one CPD. It's the RCVS CPD recording portal. It was introduced in January 2020 and it was piloted last year. So one CPD has replaced the professional development record, the PDR, and if you have used the PDR to record your CPD all your activities from the PDR will have been automatically merged over to one CPD. One CPD was really developed to help veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses to plan, record and reflect on their CPD and making it as easy as possible just to do that on the go.

CVS Requirements

So let's just cover the RCVS requirements. So the CPD requirements for veterinary surgeons is 35 hours per calendar year and for nurses is 15 hours. This year due to COVID it's been reduced by 25% so it's 26 hours for veterinary surgeons and 11 hours for veterinary nurses. We are introducing an outcomes based CPD model which means focusing on planning, plan, do, record and reflect. So the outcome space cycle and this the outcome space model in one CPD becomes mandatory from 2022.

We get a lot of questions about what you can count as CPD so the RCVS CPD requirements is really really flexible. So any learning or development that you feel is relevant to you as a professional person you can count as CPD. So it's really up to you to make that judgment call about what learning and development is relevant to you. So it should be relevant to your role or to any future aspirations.

Demo 1CPD

Okay so let me then try just to show you how to demo one CPD. See if I can just change my screen.

Home Screen

I hope you can see that okay. So this is the home screen and you'll have your name at the top and you'll see how many hours you have recorded and reflected. This is the bar that Sue Paterson was talking about. It'll turn green once you meet the requirement for this year. So you'll see the button just underneath, it says a blue button says 2020. So if I click on that one I can change the year I'm viewing. So I can go back and see how many hours I recorded in 2018 and then I'll go back to 2020. In the home screen it'll give you an overview of what you have recorded so you'll see any activities for today, future activity or past activities. In the left-hand side you see the three lines so if you click on that one you're able to the help menu. So you'll see send feedback. So if you click on that one you're able to send us a quick email from within the app. So for example if I want to ask questions about my hours for 2020 I can just click on the envelope and type in my question and that will then include a screenshot from the app so it makes it really easy for us to be able to help you.

Plan

And then at the bottom you'll see the three main sections so we have plan, record and reflect. So if we start with the plan section, I think when many of us think of planning we think of the more formal long-term planning where you assess any skills or knowledge gaps and you create objectives to address those learning needs. I think that's really important. It's good to just stop and think about what you want to do or what you need to do and are there any opportunities within your workplace that you can take advantage of. But planning is more than that. It can also, it's also the process that we do on a day-to-day basis, more informal planning. So it might for example be that you need to research a new area as part of a case-based research or you have attended a CPD activity and it motivates you to learn a bit more or for example because of COVID you need to update or learn more about the guidelines. So you have a plan of the type of CPD that you want to do and instead of just doing it in your head you can just record it in one CPD so you have it all within the app or the recording portal.

So for example you might have a consultation with a client and they have lots of questions about their pet's diabetes and you're able to answer them so it's fine but it makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable because it alerts you to the fact you're a bit rusty on the subject. So you just make a quick plan and you think okay so I will read some journals and look at the latest clinical evidence. There's also a webinar that might be relevant for me and there's a new graduate working in my practice so I'll speak to them and see if there's any new treatment approaches that I'm not aware of. So using one CPD you can just open the app and just add all those objectives quickly and it's as easy as that.

So planning really shouldn't be something that you just do in January and then don't think about for 12 months. It works best as a really ongoing and dynamic process. But of course there's no denying the value of unplanned CPD and CPD that wasn't part of your plan can be really useful learning and it may also trigger new learning activities you can add as part of your plan.

Okay so let's just have a look at CPD. So if you click on the plan section it'll take you to the plan home page. At the top you'll see active and completed so you can have up to 10 active objectives and to add a new objective you just click on the green button. So it gives you just some basic information you need to fill in so it's the title, description and due dates. So for example title, I will just do an objective that might be relevant to a lot of you, so learn more about one CPD. Great, so that's the title and then you don't have to put anything in the description. Sometimes you might find that the title is all the information you need really. I find it quite useful because I seem to forget over time what my plan was. So just, and using the app I find it really useful to use the dictate button. So as part of my phone, iPhone, it's next to the space. So if you just click on the microphone you can just talk into your phone, it'll just magically transcribe it into text. And so let's hope it works and so I'll click on that.

So I will attend the one CPD webinar and speak to colleagues in practice of how they're using one CPD. Great and then you can put a due date in, so you don't have to again but I find it quite useful just to keep myself on track. You can always go in and change that at a later date if you want to. So I'll give myself a month so we went to 2021 so the 9th of January 2021. So you can then confirm and once you're happy with everything you can just click save and then you'll see at the top there you have objective recorded successfully. So in the list there you'll see my objective and there's no hours linked to it yet and I can edit the objective so then I can mark it as complete or delete the objective. And then when I'm happy I can go back to the home screen again. As you see in the home screen this is the future activity.

Record

You can also plan by using the record button so you can record a future activity in the same way as you would record something retrospectively. So you just add a future date. So I'll show you how that works. So in the record function if you click record you'll have just the basic information: topic, duration, dates. I think as part of this webinar you have been sent a QR code so let me just quickly show you how that works. So you see the four little squares in the right hand corner and then you can just scan, hover over the QR code and it pre-populates your activity so you don't have to fill in topic. The one CPD webinar, the duration, the start date and I don't know if you've seen but if you're attending a congress for example that is multiple days you can choose to put an end date in there but if it's not applicable you don't have to put anything in there.

For activity type we have three different subcategories so we have the formal which is the more traditional type of CPD, the courses, the congresses, the distance learning but also the workplace based and self-directed. So CPD is so much more than just courses. It is really think about any learning or development that you undertake. It doesn't have to be outside of work, it can be things that you do at work as well.

The QR code didn't link my objective with activity but I can easily do that just by clicking on the objective. So you see the little plus sign next to it, it means that you can also add an objective from the recording page. So it's the same information as we did in the plan section so you just add title, description or due date. For ease you might want to choose just to put a title in and then you go back at a later date to add more information but it's up to you. Once you've saved it it will save in the list of planned activities but I already got an objective so I'll just link it here. You don't have to link it to an objective, it is optional. So if you don't have an objective to link it is fine.

Then you have the notes section, you can add some additional notes and then add attachment. So the choices we have here is take a photo, choose a photo, record audio, add a document. I think here is where one CPD becomes really useful. It's more than just an app to keep track of your hours. You can use this as your learning journal. So for example if you use the QR code to pre-record your CPD you could just click on it during the activity and use it as your journal. You take a photo of a slide or you record some audio or add documents so you can have everything in one place. You don't have to look for notes when you want to review your activities. If you want to add a certificate you could take a photo of it and everything will be saved in one place.

Okay so once I'm happy I'll just save activity and then you'll add to the hours. You'll see activity has been recorded successfully and my bar has turned green. Within the home screen you can also view your activity.

View All

So if you go to view all here you'll see in the tab it's past, today and future. So for example I go to today so might have my one CPD webinar there and if I swipe left I can choose to reflect on it from this page as well but I think for now we'll, I think there's a few questions so before we cover reflections we'll just go through the questions.

Q&A

Yeah we've had some questions first of all relating to planning. Is there a calendar view when planning work in one CPD? I'm not sure what you mean but if you mean that the planning is linked to your calendar within your phone or your Outlook calendar that's something we're working on so I'm hoping we're going to be able to introduce that next year.

In terms of recording, can we link CPD from other providers such as Beaver directly to one CPD? You can if they create a QR code which I'll show you just a little bit later on and then you can link it but there's no automatic link into one CPD.

I think you've already covered this slightly, can you dictate things instead of typing? Yes, using your phone you can dictate it. Yes, so you just press the microphone and just speak into your phone. I find it really amazing so it's good.

Can I fill in one CPD retrospectively? Yeah so using the record function you can choose to do it retrospectively. You can go back as far as you want or you can record a future event. You can use both functions.

Okay and final question, if I'm recording all my CPD on one CPD do I need to keep any other records? No, so as I showed you one CPD is more than just an app to record your hours. You can use this as your learning journal to keep everything in one place so it's really useful that way.

Okay we have one final question that's come in, can you force the QR reader to scan, mine does not trigger on its own? I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean that, because I know using the NHS app you can just open your camera and it'll automatically scan, we originally have that feature but it caused a few problems within the app so we're working on that. So at the moment you'll have to go through the record function and then press the four squares but if that doesn't work for you send us an email with some feedback and the development team will look into it for you.

Looks like that's all of the questions that are coming through at this moment. Okay excellent.

Reflection

Okay so let's continue, let's talk about reflection. I know reflection is something that a lot of people find a bit difficult, not sure what to put in and what information is needed. There's a lot of misconceptions about reflection. Many seem to think that they need to write a reflective essay which is not what we're after at all. So the aim is really to think about the outcomes of your learning. That means think about what did you learn and what's the impact either on your practice or your duties. The note doesn't have to capture the full experience. You don't have to write down everything, just the key points and what you feel is important at the time. You can always go back to it and add at another date.

Reflection really isn't one-size-fits-all. There's many different ways to do it and everyone does it in a different way. Some people prefer to just do it on their own, others might want to do it with a colleague or a mentor or you can do it as a group discussion and have some reflective discussions. Sometimes group discussion can be really beneficial, come up with some new ideas or some action that can actually improve patient care so it can be really beneficial.

Reflecting and coming to the conclusion that you didn't learn anything from your CPD is a valid reflection and will help to guide future learning and help you to understand why that CPD wasn't beneficial. But it is useful to regularly try to reflect on your CPD. You will forget things over time and the more you reflect the easier the process will become for you.

So it's important just to think about the purpose of CPD is to add value to your service or to the care that you provide. So it is valuable to reflect to think about any changes that has happened as part of your learning activities and have they made a difference and see if you can share your reflection and learn from them and try to make that an integral part of your practice.

So for example you might have attended a webinar about a new drug so you learn all about the drug and how to use it and then you get back into practice. A great way to assess it would be then to reflect on it. So you think about does it work more effectively than any alternatives, is it less side effects and what do clients think. This type of reflection works really well with group reflection just to share the experience with others and that could be as a really informal chat in a staff room or as a team meeting. What's really beneficial if that conversation can then count as CPD for some of your colleagues that weren't able to attend the original CPD activity.

Guided Reflection

So just as there's many ways to reflect, one CPD is really flexible when it comes to reflection. So if we click on the reflection you'll see to do, complete and all and you'll see my one CPD webinar here. So again if I swipe left I can edit it if I want to go back to the activity but now I just want to reflect on it so I'll just click on it. There are two different ways to reflect. You can either do the guided reflection which is three prompt questions to guide you through the process step by step and these prompts were developed as part of our CPD pilot. Veterinary surgeons and nurses who weren't that used to reflection felt that really helped them just to answer these questions rather than thinking about reflection and less intimidating than having just a blank piece of paper in front of them.

So we can start with just looking at the guided reflections. So how did the CPD relate to your learning objectives and plan? So if I would use this one CPD webinar as an example again I'll just use the dictate button because I find that really useful. So the webinar was part of my plan to learn more about CPD or one CPD, just amend that. Great.

And what were the key things you learned? So it doesn't have to be a lot of information, it's just about the key things that you gain. So I learned how to plan, record and reflect on the go. Great.

And then what impact has the CPD undertaken have on you as a professional in your role? You might find that you don't want to go through all these questions at the same time. So for example you could start just after the activity, think about the key things you learn and then go back and just fill in the impact at a later date. But just for since I'm demoing it it'll be easier if I do it now. So the impact it's had, reflecting and recording on workplace based CPD has made it easier for me to meet my CPD requirement. Great. So that's easy to do and you can just save it but I'll just show you the more free format reflection.

So you don't have to go through all these questions unless you want to. So the free format is just you have the open text so here you can just type in anything or use the dictate if you want to. So that could be anything but you can also add an attachment. So it's the same choices as you had before within the recording sections. You can take a photo, choose a photo, record an audio, add a document. So for example you might have some notes on a notepad and you can just take a photo of that and add that to one CPD and then you have your reflection in one place. Or as you may remember Sue Paterson was talking about recording an audio so you can do that here. So that means that you can either just on your own talking, recording your thoughts or your reflective thoughts or you might want to do is just record your reflective conversation that you have with a colleague over coffee or record a conversation that you have as part of a team meeting.

I think that's really useful. It means that reflection doesn't have to take up any extra time. There's no additional paperwork then. You can just do it as part of your working day. You don't have to wait until you can get the time to go to a laptop or take some time outside of work and so you can just do it as you go along. You don't have to use both the guidance and free, it's really up to you.

I'd love to hear about some creative ways that you have reflected. I know some people for example they use Twitter to reflect so they tweet out their reflective thoughts and then take a screenshot and add that to one CPD or others have reflective discussions on forums and then use a screenshot for evidence. So there's so many ways to reflect on your CPD and this really isn't one-size-fits-all. Then once you're happy you can just save your reflections and you'll see that it's recorded successfully.

Okay so Joe are there any questions about reflection before we move on and look at the web version?

There are quite a few reflection questions. Okay the first one is is reflection compulsory?

Reflection Compulsory

The outcome space CPD model, plan, do, record and reflect, it will become mandatory from 2022 but I would recommend that you start using reflection now because practice does make perfect so it will become easier if you start using reflection. It is really about getting the most out of your CPD and making sure that the activities you've done they actually, it's a change for you so that they're beneficial to you.

The next question is do I have to reflect on each CPD activity I do? It's up to you. You might want to do it and you can also think about you don't have to reflect in the same way for all activities. So for some activity you might just want to add a few notes and for others you want to go into a bit more depth and go through the guided reflections. I think especially using the audio recording you can just add a few thoughts and it's just about focusing on what you learned and then if you're going to use it in your practice or in your role.

Okay the next question is can we add reflections on cases which are not related to specific learning objectives? Yeah so you do need to record an activity and then you can reflect on it but the outcome space model is the cycle so you don't have to go through plan, record, reflect. You can start at the recording, add an activity, reflect. It is completely up to you. But in order to reflect you need to have a recorded activity against it.

Okay and the next question is how much depth is required in reflection? So it could just be a few notes, it could be bullet points. Using the audio you can just reflect your thoughts. So it's just about focusing on what did you learn and how are you going to, what impact has it had. So it doesn't have to be a lot of details. You don't have to go through exactly what you did and your feelings about it. It's just getting the basic details there and think about what you find beneficial, what will work best for you so that you can review it and you'll be able to use it again.

Okay the next question, I'm unsure about the two types of reflection recording available in one CPD, please can you offer guidance on when each is suitable? It really depends on how you prefer to reflect. If you prefer to use the guided questions to just help you through you can. Again you don't have to go through them all unless you feel it's relevant or if you prefer to just record, just use the note section and just record notes you can or you can use the audio to record. So there's no strict guidelines, it's whatever you feel is more beneficial to you really.

Okay the next question is I use handwritten notes, I'm uncertain whether I'm supposed to duplicate any of this on the app. No absolutely not. If you use handwritten notes you can just take a photo of that and add into one CPD and you'll have everything in one place.

Okay the next question is kind of the opposite, rather than take written notes during CPD I tend to type notes directly onto my one CPD app on my phone so I can refer back to it at any time in practice, is this fine to do? Of course, sounds great.

There have been a couple of questions about would you mind repeating how to do the voice notes with the microphone because a couple of people have just missed how to do that.

Voice Notes

Okay I think the easiest thing is probably for you to go back in, this is recorded, so to go back on it but basically it's just next to the space bar. So you'll see, so if I go to my recorded, there next to the space bar you'll see a little microphone. So if you just press that button and then you can just talk into your phone. This is not a one CPD feature, it's part of iPhones and Androids. So our developers are brilliant but they didn't develop that particular feature.

Okay it looks like the final question from this section. I understand it's mandatory from 2022, sorry I don't know if I just missed it, just to clarify do we need to reflect for each recorded activity from 2022? Yes, the requirement will change though, it's plan, record and reflect. So using one CPD again it's really easy for you to reflect on your CPD. So again you don't have to put in a lot of time to reflect on each activity, it could just be a few words or just record your audio. So it'll just take a minute of your time and just to think about what did you learn from the CPD and how are you going to use it. As I said before, coming to the conclusion that you didn't learn anything from the CPD is absolutely fine.

There's just one more question, how many pieces of evidence, pictures or documents can I include? I think at the moment for each activity you can add three but Felix correct me if i'm wrong. No that's correct, it's three at the moment. There have been a couple of questions around sort of character limits on certain fields and file attachments and I think you know we've already doubled the character limits on certain fields since we went live by popular demand. Please by all means keep any feedback coming into us because we read every single comment that people send in through the app and there are no, you know within reason there are no limitations that we can't revisit or increase if the demand is there but it does have an impact on us sometimes in terms of performance or cost that we also need to bear in mind. So unlimited something tends to be difficult but those limits are not set in stone.

Great and as Felix says we do change the features of the app depending on your feedback. So you don't have to just contact us when we have a problem. If you have something that you really like in the app please send us some feedback or if you think this would be really useful if I could do this instead, just use the feedback section in the app and just let us know what you think.

Okay Joe should we move over to the web version? Yeah that would be great thanks. Okay let me see if I can change my screen again.

Web Version

So the web version, you can use the web version either from your desktop or you can use it on your phone or on your iPad. It's mobile friendly so you can just access it wherever you are. The web version and the app are linked so anything that you record on the app is also available on the web version. You'll see it's quite similar setup in the web version. You have the main section plan, record and reflect.

There's a few different additional features in the web version. So for example request the CPD pause. As part of the CPD requirement if you need to stay on the register but you are struggling with your CPD you can request a pause. That might be for exceptional circumstances such as illness or planned periods away from work. So that might be parental leave or sabbatical. So then you'll request a pause which can be up to six months. Fill in the short application form and then your CPD requirement will be calculated pro rata for that year.

Some other really useful features in the web version is the annual CPD report. So you'll see just underneath the bar you can click here and you can choose which years you want to include in your report.

Report

So for example I will take 2020 and 2019. Great, so you'll see the blue tick there and then view report. Then it will just create a really nice PDF report. You'll have your name and the RCVS logo there and you see at the top I chose 2020 and 2019 so it gives a summary of how many hours I have completed during that time and then it gives you a summary of the type of activities that you recorded in 2020. So it'll be the date, the activity type and the topic and how many hours and it also tells you if you reflected or not but it will not share your reflections so you don't have to worry about that. Then if you go down you'll see a summary at the bottom which is for 2020. So you see how many hours you've done. I think that it's really nice so that you can use that if you want to show your employer your CPD or if you want to share it as part of the PSS inspection. So you just click download PDF and then it'll just download as a PDF and you can save it and then send it on to whoever you want to share it with.

Excel

I'll go back and sometimes you might feel you need a bit more information. You can also export all your data into an Excel spreadsheet. So if you choose export my CPD activities and reflection, it'll export your CPD activities, your notes and your reflection into a spreadsheet if you need that for anything.

My Activities

The other thing that's different in the web version is my activities. So here you can view any activities that you've recorded and you're able to search. So you can use the basic search, just topic and dates, or the advanced search as well where you can choose by year, by type of activity, topic or the notes or objective. So it's great if you have a long list of CPD, it makes it easier for you to find.

So for example if I just do a basic search I'll show you how, the last month. So I'll search for anything in the last month and then here it is, so it's two activity. You see this speech bubble with a tick in it means that I have completed reflection for that one. So I can just click on it to edit it or delete it if I choose to.

So that is the web version and I will also just quickly show you how you create a QR code.

Creating a QR Code

So you log out and then you'll get to the login page for the web version, onecpd.rcvs.org.uk and then to the right you can create a QR code. I think we all think QR code we think courses, congresses but you can actually use them for if you're organizing a team meeting. So you can just quickly generate a QR code and then send it around to your colleagues and they'll just pre-populate their CPD app. So for example I'll just use the same, this webinar. I'll choose a date, just it's just today and hours, so this is for one hour and the activity type is a distance learning webinar. And then I'll just click make a code and then here it is. So you can download that and send it to your colleagues or share it if you're organizing a course or discussion. So it's a really simple way for you to make it easy to record your CPD.

Okay so I think that's the demo done. So let's see if I can get back to the presentation.

More Questions

So questions, is there any more questions?

There are more questions. The first one is if I've signed up to a webinar provider for one year and they are releasing content on a wide variety of subjects, how does this fit in with specific CPD planning? Well it's up to you really to plan your CPD. You might choose, you might think that there's a few different topics that you'd like to learn more about but then again spontaneous CPD is really good. So any CPD that's outside of your original plan can be really useful learning and then you might find, think that you want to learn more in that area so you can add it to your plan if it's applicable.

Thank you. This is quite a specific question. When we submit our renewal applications for advanced practitioner status is there a danger we'll be rejected because we haven't been completing the one CPD in the way assessors are expecting? I'm not sure I'll be able to answer that but I think we have tried to make it as easy as possible for advanced practitioners. So in one CPD they'll have the additional fields that they need to suggest. They can just tag their activities depending on their specialty. But if you want to I can, you can submit your questions in writing to me and I'll check with my colleague who deals with the advanced practitioner queries and I can get back to you.

Thank you. After recording an activity we can add documents and reminders for the documents, is this mainly for attendance certificates? I tend to type up my notes for webinars, is it better to attach that onto a free reflection or in the documents? Also depends on what your notes are. If they're reflective notes then you could, then it's probably a good idea to put it in the reflective section and then you'll see in your summary that you have reflected on it which is always nice. But it's up to you how you want to use it. You could attach it to your recording as well if you want to.

Okay. In the app how do I change the year for future planning? So you can just click on the recording button and then you can just choose a future date. You don't have to be on the page for any particular year. So if you click record and then the date you can just scroll to use any dates. You could add something for March 2021 if you wanted to. There's no limit on how far you can advance you can plan your CPD.

Okay. Do I just take a photograph of the code to add the CPD, the QR code? I believe that is, yes. So no you have to go into the record section and then click on the little four squares at the top right hand corner to scan the QR code. As I said I'm hoping that we'll be able to use the QR code in a similar way which the NHS track and trace app is using so you can just use it through your camera but it caused a few problems in the past. We're just working on that but hopefully we'll be able to resolve that next year.

Okay the final question for now, do I have to create a new QR code for each CPD? No you don't have to use QR codes at all. You can just go to the record section and just record it manually. And I should mention that this morning or afternoon at 12 we had a webinar for new users where we went through the planning, record and reflection section in more detail. So you might find it beneficial to look at that as well.

Okay there are a few more questions coming in. If I'm undertaking a series of CPD that is all linked, is it best to log it as you go or altogether? It depends on what works best for you really. You might want to, it's always good to regularly update your CPD and record on it because then you can add reflections but if you feel that it's better for you just to record it as a block and then reflect on it afterwards and that's fine. So it really depends on what you feel works best for you.

There's a question I think you've covered, does the plan section carry over into the next year? Yeah I mean the plan section with the objectives they'll still be there as long as they're active objectives. So you can mark them as complete once you completed that objective but you can plan forward into 2021 for example. Yeah of course yeah so you can use the record to plan advanced CPD of course yeah.

Okay. Could you explain the QR code and how to scan them in please, do you have to have it on a desktop and fill your mobile at that? No you can as long as you have the QR code in front of the phone it should work. So it could be on your desktop, you can print it out or it could be as part of an email that you're sent. As long as the phone recognizes the QR code it should be fine. I'm not sure of the technical details behind the QR code but that seems to work for me. If the person who asked that question if you have specific questions you'd like to submit as part of the app and that will send a screenshot so we could look into that more for you.

The final question for now, when I write notes and reflect I tend to look at a past patient and think how would the outcome be different, does this break GDPR rules? I think as long as you just keep the details, you don't use any names or anything like that should be fine. And you know just you don't have to have a lot of details, just think about the learning and how it impacts you. So you don't have to have the names or any other identifying details but again the reflection is there for you so what's beneficial to you.

So there are no more questions right now. Okay okay well thank you so much for attending this webinar today. I find it really useful just to understand some of your questions and as I said we will collect all the questions that we have received into a frequently asked question that will be sent to you and we'll send in the evaluation form that I'll be really grateful if you could complete. If there's any questions you have you can submit a question as part of the evaluation form but you can also book a one-to-one session with me and we can discuss any your particular circumstances or any problems that you have. I hope you have a really nice evening and thank you so much for attending.

Hello everyone and welcome to this lunchtime webinar. My name is Jenisa Scap and I'm the lead for postgraduate education at the RCVS. I'm joined today by two veteran surgeons live with me today is Sue Patson who's our chair of Education committee and on RCVS Council and we also have a pre-recording from Richard Stevenson.

So this week we have been doing two webinars about CPD. On Tuesday we were covering reflection and today it's more about what counts as CPD. So we'll be talking about the RCVS CPD policy, what type of activities you can count as CPD, but really focusing on the flexibility of the policy. And we'll give you an overview of it but really focus on your questions today.

We have received several questions as part of the registration process but you're also able to ask questions as we go along. So just pop them in the chat box and then my colleague Joe will curate all the questions and ask them in our live Q&A session at the end.

So today is all about making sure that you get what you need out of this webinar. So do ask as many questions as you want as there are no stupid questions.

We do get a lot of questions about what counts as CPD into our emails and on phones, a lot about can I count this activity as CPD, how many hours does this count for, do you have to do clinical CPD, and how do I evidence or record my CPD. So I'm hoping that after this webinar you'll have a clearer idea of how the CPD policy works and realize the flexibility of it.

So to start off we'll hear from Richard Stevenson and talk about his approach to CPD.

Richard Stevenson:

Hi there. I'm Richard Stevenson. I qualified way back in 1987. It seems a tremendous long time ago now. I was just reflecting the other day that a lot of the jobs I do in practice weren't even invented when I graduated, or at least were very very difficult in equine practice. When I think of things like ultrasound examination, you had to have a machine the size of this room and you got a tiny little grainy picture which looked more like a snowstorm. I can remember actually referring horses to Newmarket practices just to have a tendon scan. MRI, something we do every day, was simply not available for horses. And when we think about gastroscopy, we didn't even know horses could get gastric ulcers. I remember actually being taught at college that when ulcers were found in stomachs postmortem they were postmortem changes and they weren't clinically significant. We now know of course it's one of the most major diseases.

So how do we keep up to date? How do we acquire this knowledge as we go along in practice? And one of the commonest questions that the college gets is what is CPD? And we all think of CPD as going to conferences and congresses, and of course that is a great way of doing CPD, but it's not necessarily the right thing for you today. And of course it's been extremely difficult for the last year due to COVID-19 when we've all actually had to expand our horizons as to how to do CPD. So we're now all very familiar with the webinar. I'm sure we can all do online journal clubs, but it doesn't have to even be that formal.

In our practice we often have very animated discussions about case management. We try to have a clinical meeting—we don't try, we do have a clinical meeting once a week when we discuss any difficult cases that have transpired during the week. If we haven't had any difficult cases, which is rare, we might do a journal club. And we do have a cycle of talks on various seasonal issues that we do tend to repeat every year just to reinforce the knowledge in case we've forgotten about things like laminitis, for example, since last year. And you know even just reading a journal can be very very valuable CPD.

But what we do need to do is we have to record it. And one thing I've become a great fan of is the app, which I'm sure you've all got. You can't really see it actually there, but one thing I've discovered about this one CPD app, and I've only discovered this last week myself, is on the reflect bit, which is something I've always been a bit skeptical about, but on the reflect thing you can actually, if you go into reflect and you do the free bit there, you can actually dictate into the app. So if you're like me you can only type with one finger and you hate all this having to record everything, you can actually just talk to the one CPD app and do your reflecting. And I've actually, I've only discovered that about a week ago and it's absolutely fantastic and it's made a big change.

So remember anything can be CPD, anything related to your work. One thing, bizarre one that I was asked about years ago was somebody doing a reversing a trailer course—could that be CPD? It turned out that they actually were providing an equine ambulance service, so reversing a trailer is actually quite important, useful CPD for them to do. It just has to be recorded. And I think with the app, with the ability actually just to talk to it, we can all really actually enjoy recording our CPD rather than being a chore.

So best of luck with your CPD. I hope that's helped you and given you a few ideas, and I hope you enjoyed the rest of the webinar.

Jenisa:

So thank you Richard. Yes, so as Richard was talking about, CPD is all about lifelong learning. And working in the veterinary profession there's always going to be new drugs, new techniques, and even if you're not working in clinical practice there's going to be new legislation and new evidence that you need to stay on top of and develop yourself, and but also to make sure that you have a fulfilling and interesting career.

So as I'm sure you're aware, CPD is mandatory as part of our code of conduct. It's 35 hours for veterinary surgeons and 15 hours for veterinary nurses. And from next year we are changing the approach to CPD slightly, so we're focusing on outcomes by using the outcomes-based cycle of plan, do, record and reflect. But what counts as CPD has not changed and the RCVS has a really flexible policy. So any learning or development that's relevant to you as a professional person can count as CPD. You're all professionals, you know how to meet your learning needs and development needs. So the RCVS does not tell you what type of CPD you need to do, what format of CPD you need to do. But as long as you stay on the register, whether you're a veterinary surgeon or a veterinary nurse, you need to comply with the full requirement.

So it doesn't matter if you're working full-time, part-time, if you're retired and only go and see a few cases, or if you're not working in clinical practice, the requirement is the same for everyone who's on the register.

There are a few exceptions. So veterinary surgeons can change to non-practicing and you can do that anytime during the year, just go into your My Account and change that status, and then when you're ready to go back into work you can change it back. So it's a quick process. Veterinary nurses can remove their name temporarily from the register, and again you can do that in My Account. And if you restore within 18 months you don't have to pay a restoration fee. And if you need to stay on the register but you're struggling with your CPD, you can apply to pause your CPD. That might be for illness, taking care of family members, or parental leave for example. And you do that by going into your one CPD account on the web, the web version not the app.

So our CPD requirements—it's all about what you need and what's relevant to you. So if you're not working in clinical practice your CPD doesn't have to be clinical. And the type of CPD that you undertake doesn't have to be courses that you do outside of work. You might be doing CPD as part of your role without realizing it, and it's just making sure that you record those sessions and then you can count this toward your CPD requirement.

And when you plan your CPD, I think it's really useful just to step back and think about what do I actually want to do or what do I need to do? Were there any significant events in the last year that make you want to take advantage of and have as part of your CPD plan? Think about any opportunities in practice. But when you plan your CPD, try not just to think of courses and webinars. Also think of can you learn from someone in practice, any team meetings or anything like that.

And objectives and plans doesn't have to be something we do in January and then it lasts for 12 months. It should be a really dynamic process. You can do it at any time. And we have our one CPD which is our recording portal, and using the app it's easy to put an objective in. So it could be a really short-term objective. For example, you're working in practice and a pet comes in with diabetes and you're able to treat it fine but you just realize that you need to brush up on your skills a little bit. So you could just take out your app and just add an objective there. It'll take less than a minute and then you'll have it saved in your e-portfolio to remind you later and then you can link activities to that. Because you know we're all busy, it's so easy to forget as we go along.

But of course CPD that is not part of your plan still counts. There's going to be many opportunities that you get that's not part of your plan, but you might reflect on them and think actually I want to learn more in that area, so it might become then part of your ongoing CPD later on.

And we always get questions about what is an objective, how much information do I have to put in? So we've added a few examples here. You see a few clinical and non-clinical, and it depends on your role again. You don't have to have the clinicals if you're not in clinical practice or non-clinical. But you can see they're quite generic. You don't have to put a lot of details into them.

I think one of the most common questions we get is for people who's no longer working in clinical practice and they're asking if they need to do a specific number of hours CPD that's related to clinical practice. And no, as long as your role is not clinical then you don't have to do CPD that's related in that area. And even if you are working in clinical practice, your CPD doesn't have to be all clinical. It's about looking at you as a professional more holistically and think of anything that's relevant to you as a professional.

And of course CPD is going to change as you progress in your role and as your personal circumstances change. Having young children for example, you might not be able to do the evening courses or seminars, so you focus more on work-related CPD or reading. And you might not like distance learning, so reading or face-to-face CPD, once we're able to do that again, might be more appropriate for you.

And in our recording portal, one CPD, we have a few subcategories to record your CPD, just to try to encourage a wider range of activity. And I think the one that is used less is workplace-based CPD. So think of any learning and development that helps you to do your job more effectively. You know, you might have case discussions with colleagues, team meetings, or you know think of everything that's changed over the last year because of COVID. You will have done so many changes and learned so much, and that's probably going to be one of the most relevant CPD you did last year. So that might be part of your objectives, and you can have that as part of your plan to learn at work. But I think many of the workplace-based CPD is also going to be more ad hoc and spontaneous.

And then the other two categories—formal, which is probably the more typical CPD we think of: courses, seminars, distance learning and webinars. But we also have self-directed learning, which is reading and preparing papers, preparing presentations. And we always get questions about how do you evidence that you've done self-directed learning? And we trust you. So as long as you record it, it's fine. But the best way to evidence your CPD is to reflect on it. So again using the recording portal one CPD, you can just record your time that you spent reading or preparing a presentation—that's your CPD—and then go to the reflect section and add your reflections and add your learning and your impact, and that is the best way to provide evidence for your CPD.

So that's all from me at the moment. I'll show you quickly how to use one CPD at the end, but I'll pass you over to Sue Patterson who'll talk about her approach to CPD.

Sue Patterson:

Thank you Jenny, and thank you everybody for joining us. I'm going to start with a little bit of an apology. We have a thunderstorm in Cumbria at the moment, so if I freeze I apologize. I think probably Jenny will have to do a tap dance or something just to fill in the time.

But what I thought I'd start by doing is, last night when I was looking through this and thinking how I was going to sort of present a little piece for you, I thought we'd start just by looking at a definition of CPD because I think that's a really useful starting point. And so what I found was it says it's learning activities that professionals engage in to develop and enhance their ability. So that's really really broad ranging. And I think what I would add to that on a personal basis, and we're talking about both vets and vet nurses of course when we're talking about vet professionals, is that has to be directly or indirectly to improve animal health and welfare because that's what we're all about.

So what I thought I'd do is I just talk through those three big groups that Jenny's already referred to—the formal, the workplace and the self-directed CPD—and just give you some more examples of the way that I fit my CPD into those three categories, just to hopefully give you some just a little bit of a feel for how we can do it and also just to perhaps direct you to some resources. Because I said someone, the CPD referral groups, and one of the things that we commonly see is people struggle to have resources to actually be able to go and do CPD, particularly that fits in around their lifestyle.

So my first thought is really I think it's important to mix and match. So use lots of different ways to do your CPD. And of course we've got lots of different ways in which we can do that now. Richard referred to it before in his pre-recorded presentation. We're all missing face-to-face conferences and courses, and although there's fabulous virtual stuff about, I think one of the things that we should say about face-to-face CPD is it's not just the formal lectures that are CPD, it's all the bits in between times too. So I love when I go to a dermatology conference the opportunity to chat over coffee with friends or discuss scabby dogs over lunch, and the post-course discussion forums are really useful. And that is all CPD because you're reflecting, you're discussing, you're exchanging ideas.

We know the massive amount of virtual stuff that's been available to us over the last 12 months, and we've got webinars, we've got podcasts, there's been lots of Facebook events, there've been clinical and non-clinical CPD offerings. I mean people like BVA, VDS have done some fantastic stuff around great places to work. College has done some great stuff around the campfire chats. And I have to say I'm a convert to podcasts. Any of you who've not discovered Podbean yet, there's probably over a hundred different providers on there providing veterinary CPD and it's all free.

And then the other thing of course that a lot of us are very very aware of now is sustainability. And I've just enrolled for external qualifications. I've just registered to do an EMA Foundation course in sustainability. So it all counts as CPD and that's formal.

When we're looking at workplace CPD, we do this all the time at work. So face-to-face in the workplace, discussing cases. You know it may be how did you manage that diabetic dog, how did so-and-so respond to that new ear treatment that you'd used. So clinical rounds, face-to-face discussion with friends, but even virtual discussion groups are useful too. So things like Vet Voices, things like Vet Wings, things like the Carpool Cases which BVA did, online discussion forums. So non-clinical stuff, for example some of the stuff that SPVS do. And I'm a member of a derm listserv where I can discuss cases with friends all over the world. So it all counts as CPD.

Mentorship is important too, whether you mentor somebody, a colleague at work, whether it's a new vet, a younger vet, or whether you're actually mentored yourself. And I do both of these. I'm a mentor and I'm also mentored. I have a clinical mentor, people who I go to, I chat with, who I can talk through cases with. But also I have someone who helps me around personal leadership, helps me to reflect and improve in the way that I approach things. For example, it may be something really simple just like how to chair a meeting to actually get the outcomes that you want from that meeting. And that's all workplace-based CPD.

Self-directed stuff—I think this is where people sometimes struggle. But lecturing, of course Jenny's already mentioned it, and preparations of lectures. And it doesn't have to be if you're a specialist presenting a lecture, it could be you're presenting to a group, a group of local Scouts, it could be you're going to the Women's Institute, it could be you're just doing something in a practice environment. It's the ability to look, to research, to check there's nothing new in the literature that's really really important. And so before I present something I'll always go into a PubMed search, I'll go into the college library and just see if there's anything that I need to include, or I may even just revise something. You know I may just revise a pathway, for example, just so that I know that I'm able to explain it in simple terms.

Writing papers, obviously literature search is around that. But then more simplistically, just in a practice situation you have a difficult case. You know it may be you phone a friend to ask advice, it may be you go to a telemedicine platform to ask someone, it may be you read an article the night before you've got that difficult case coming in. You might want to check treatment options. You may, if you've got surgery coming up, you may want to sit down and revise the anatomy of a certain approach to a particular case. And then of course things like veterinary reading. And veterinary reading is again very broad in its context. And that might be something like reading around welfare, looking at the new animal welfare legislation, BVA's work for example on ear cropping, or it may be as I've done recently reading through a new consensus paper on feline allergy.

So there are lots and lots of ways of doing your CPD. It's really flexible, it's entirely up to you how you do it, and it should be enjoyable too. I really enjoy doing the CPD that I do, so I think it's important that we all do.

So that's enough from me. I'll hand you back to Jenny. Jenny's going to just talk us through one CPD and how that works, the gorgeous one CPD app, which even dinosaurs like me and Richard already says he can use as well. And then I think we're going to take some questions. So back to you Jenny.

Jenisa:

Great, thank you so much. So I'll try to share my screen again.

Hopefully that's my phone. And so we've been mentioning one CPD quite a lot today. So that's our recording portal. It's available both as an app and as a website. And we did some webinars in December last year for new users and more experienced users. So I'm just going to show you quickly how to use the plan and record session, but you can refer back to those webinars just to get a more in-depth demonstration.

So in the planning section you're able to add objectives, you can edit your objectives. So as I said before, an objective doesn't have to be something you do for the next year. It could just be that you want to review evidence for diabetes. And as Richard says, using your phone you can just dictate into it rather than typing. If you want to, so on my phone it's next to the space button and I'll just press the microphone: "Review evidence for diabetes." And then there I'll just—there. And you could put a description, but sometimes it's, I think it's enough with the title and a due date. Again it's not mandatory, you don't have to put it there, but I'll give myself a week. Confirm and then save. So then it's saved here as part of my objectives, and you can see I don't have any time recorded against it yet.

So now you've added our objective or our plan, and it took you less than a minute. So it is something that's really quick to do. And then to record it, it's just the basic information: the topic, the duration, the date. You can put a start date or an end date if you want to. And then the activity types. This is what both me and Sue have been talking about—the formal, the workplace-based and the self-directed. So there's a list of activities under each subcategory, but we also have "other." But don't worry too much about the categories. You can always add some information in the notes section, and so you know don't stress about making sure that you always get the right category. That's not the most important thing.

And then you're able to link it to an objective. So that's how you'll record the time in the objective side. So you could just link it to anything, or you can also press the plus sign there and you can create an objective here which will then be saved in your plan section. You can add notes, and you're also able to add an attachment. So for example a photo, a voice note or anything like that. So if you have a certificate you can take a photo of that. You might have some notes, or you want to take a photo of slides, for example if you're going to a presentation. You can use one CPD as your learning journal and not just an app for recording your hours.

So but again, if you want some more information, go to our one CPD webinar. But I think hopefully we have some questions from Joe.

Joe:

Yes, we've had a really high amount of questions, so please bear with me with the chat box. So many of these questions came in as part of people's registration. So Jenny, the first group of questions are for you.

Does this workshop count as CPD?

Jenisa:

Yes, it can count as your CPD. Just remember to record and reflect on it.

Joe:

Do team meetings count as CPD?

Jenisa:

Yeah, I think that's an excellent form of CPD. And again, using the app you can record some of the reflective discussions that you have as part of your team meeting. So yeah, a great form of CPD.

Joe:

As a PhD student, a lot of my learning has been lab techniques or bioinformatics. Can that be counted as CPD?

Jenisa:

Yes, of course. It sounds great. Again, just remember to keep a record of it.

Joe:

Courses and conferences about animal nutrition, do they count as CPD?

Jenisa:

Yes, I feel like I'm just saying yes! So you can see that anything that's relevant to you does count as CPD. So it's just about thinking about what's relevant to your role and what you can benefit from.

Joe:

Okay, a bit more specific. What counts as CPD for vets working in food safety and animal welfare?

Jenisa:

Again, it'll depend on your role, but I'm thinking there'll probably be a lot of legislative changes due to Brexit that keeping up to date will be relevant CPD for you, for example.

Joe:

Thank you. I've done a 35-hour course on pet bereavement. How much of this would be considered as CPD?

Jenisa:

That sounds like really interesting CPD. So yeah, you can count 35 hours of that course, as long as you feel it's beneficial. Again, just record it and then to evidence that CPD, reflect on your CPD. So you don't have to have a certificate. As long as you reflect on it, that's the best evidence you can have.

Joe:

Thank you. So it will be useful for you to clear something up. There's a question: why does reading veterinary journals no longer count as CPD?

Jenisa:

So I think there's quite a common misconception that in 2016 we removed the undocumented 10 hours for veterinary surgeons and five hours for veterinary nurses. But that didn't mean we removed reading as a CPD activity. Reading is an excellent form of CPD. You just need to evidence it. So we used to say you need to have documented your reading, but now using the one CPD you can just reflect on your reading or self-directed CPD, and that really is the best way for you to evidence your CPD.

Joe:

Thank you. Then the final question for Jenny before we go to Sue is: is there a limit of how many webinars we can count as CPD?

Jenisa:

No, we don't limit the type of activities that you can do or that you should do. It's up to you to determine how best to meet your professional needs. I would probably recommend to try to do a wide range of activities, but again it will depend on your circumstances.

Joe:

Okay, so the next tranche of questions are for you, Sue. The first one is: how do I categorize producing clinical SOPs and protocols for my practice?

Sue:

So I mean, this is a question that came in advance, so I have to confess I had a sneak view of this and I had to look through the CPD app. And I mean my first comment would be I don't think we need to get too hung up on how we categorize these things. The important thing is that we do the CPD and reflect on it. But I would probably put it under workplace and I'd probably put it under "other," and I think that will probably be enough. I don't think you're going to get taken to disciplinary committee by putting your CPD under the wrong category, so I think as long as it's close enough that should be absolutely fine.

Joe:

Thank you. So self-directed CPD—what counts and doesn't count? Is reading for cases CPD even if it isn't formally organized? How many hours of my CPD can be self-directed?

Sue:

Well, as Jenny's already said, college does not dictate to us how much of our CPD is self-directed and how we do it. It's all about personal development. So if we're looking at cases for CPD, yes, absolutely all of that can count. And it may be something like you've got a dog that's come in which has got severe arthritis and it's uncontrolled with its pain, so you go back, you look at pain relief, you speak to some colleagues. It maybe you've got a guinea pig coming in the next day—haven't for bed if it's me—for an anesthetic, so the night before you go and have a look at the anesthetic protocols again. You might speak to an exotic specialist. It maybe you've got a dog with lymphoma, so you look up some protocols, you might read around it. It may be that you've got a dog that's had a side effect from a drug and you go and you have a look in the data sheets as to what it is, what alternatives there are. So all of these I think are CPD and are things that you can reflect on and things you can record. But again, as we said before, I think it's good to have a real mix of CPD. So whilst I would be absolutely comfortable including that, I would suggest there's other stuff you might put in as well.

Joe:

Thank you very much. Can you include online health and safety updates and things like pet plan training as CPD?

Sue:

Yes, I think that's absolutely right. Yes, I mean particularly during COVID, you know, all of the stuff, the fantastic webinars that were put out by BVA on Sundays about health and safety and risk assessments around COVID and safe working at work, all of that was CPD. And then things like pet plan training—yes, yes, again I think it's really important to understand about insurance. We should be able to have informed decisions with clients around insurance, and so yeah, all of that is CPD because it goes back to what we were saying before: there are learning activities that help us to develop and enhance our abilities as veterinary surgeons. So yes, that's all CPD.

Joe:

Great. I'm not in practice. I teach in a university. How much of my teaching prep time and student supervision can count as CPD?

Sue:

I think these are some more difficult ones to categorize because obviously the day job is something that involves those things. But what I would suggest, and certainly I think the way I would look at this, is that if it's stuff that you have to do around that core teaching, around that core supervision. So for example, if you need to update your lectures, you're going to do a literature search, you know, look on PubMed, look on college library, so you're actually making sure that all the stuff is up to date—that would be CPD. If you need to look through notes, you need to do some revision so you can supervise those students more effectively, so preparation for seminars, preparation for workshops outside of that normal activity, again I would suggest you could log that as CPD.

Joe:

Thank you very much. What counts as CPD if I'm now in business rather than practice? And I've got another question that's very close to that. Do non-veterinary courses count as CPD? So we've had people asking about business and management, sign language—somebody has an unusually large percentage of their clients with hearing problems—marketing, etc. Can that count as CPD?

Sue:

Yeah, absolutely. Again, as we've said, it enhances your ability to do your job. So whether it's communication, whether it's direct communication or sign language—fantastic. Whether it's risk assessment, whether it's financial training, whether it's health and safety—yeah, if it fits into your job then it's CPD, absolutely.

Joe:

I sit on various veterinary councils. Can our committee meetings count as CPD?

Sue:

That's a more difficult one, but I don't see why, I don't see why it can't, particularly if you're dealing with veterinary business. No, absolutely, I don't see why that that shouldn't. Again, I wouldn't want that to be your only form of CPD, but you are exchanging ideas, you are chatting with colleagues. It's perhaps indirectly benefiting animal health and welfare. But yes, I don't see why it shouldn't. But I would have that as part of a much wider, if you like, portfolio of your CPD.

Joe:

Great. I think you've touched on this, but it would probably be good to revisit. Is mentoring in the workplace CPD?

Sue:

Yes, it is. And of course the obvious example of that at the moment is vet GDP, where we have literally thousands of people going through their online training in order to mentor new graduates. So yes, it very definitely is a form of CPD. But again, although that's hugely beneficial to the new grad and it will be beneficial to you personally, I wouldn't want that as your only form of CPD. But yes, it is CPD.

Joe:

Are Facebook Live events by APBC, CAM and other professions—do they count as CPD?

Sue:

We keep saying yes, don't we? So yeah, it's another yes. I mean, as part of our much wider vet team, I think we've got a huge amount to learn from, if you like, some of the para-professionals that we work with as well as vets who are in specialties. So working with behaviorists, working with people who know about pain management, wound management, I think is really really important. So yes, that's CPD. And I think these Facebook Live events—I've been to quite a lot of them during lockdown—are great because it's a great way to interact. It's a great way, as we keep saying, to exchange ideas, to debate, to discuss, look at other people's ways of doing things and looking at reflecting on the way that you do things yourself and perhaps ways that you can change, you can improve, or perhaps help others to change and improve. So yeah, they're really important.

Joe:

Yeah. I've got a couple of questions I think I can ask them at the same time though. Does non-clinical CPD count, for example mental health first aid training? And a lecturer is asking about keeping up to date with safeguarding issues for students. Do those count as CPD?

Sue:

Yes. And actually I would say that's really important CPD. And again, that's been reflected in a lot of the stuff that's been produced over the last 12 months because we know that well-being and mental health is really really important. So VDS, BVA have done a lot of stuff around their great place to work. I mentioned it before, college's campfire chats—it's non-clinical CPD but it's around well-being. And I think as professions we need not just to look after our animals, we need to look after ourselves and our colleagues. So that's all part of a much wider remit of CPD I would suggest.

Joe:

Right, so this is a final question at this point, Sue, and then we'll go back to Jenny, please. It's more of a point really and I'm interested in your comment. I found it difficult to do CPD last year because of COVID and the changes we had to make in practice.

Sue:

I mean, I think one of the reasons why college paused CPD for people is because we recognized that there were people in lots of different circumstances. There were people, for example, who were having to home school, there were people who were furloughed, there were people who were covering for other people who were ill, who were having to self-isolate. So everybody's circumstances were very very different.

I think the one thing I would say about the last 12 months is there's been a huge amount of CPD available—virtual CPD. I talked about podcasts, I talked about webinars before. So it's been available, but people's personal circumstances have sometimes not allowed them to do that. I mean, I've been in meetings where people have been having to have a meeting and talk in a sensible and educated way when they've got a 5-year-old running around in the background. So I think that has given us challenges around doing CPD.

But I would hope as we start to get some degree of normality, and particularly as we flag some of the resources that are out there—and they're free resources and they're fantastic high-quality resources—that people should be able to engage again and keep up to date with their CPD.

Joe:

And possibly considering some of the work that they had to do in changing practice during the pandemic could potentially be counted.

Sue:

Absolutely. I mean, I mentioned the BVA webinars before, but resources were put out by a lot of people—by SPVS, by BEVA, by BSAVA—talking about safe working, talking about triaging cases, so having to prioritize what cases they saw, giving advice to people over the phone. Yeah, absolutely, all of that was perhaps subconsciously doing CPD even if we didn't have time to sit down and listen to a podcast. Yeah, absolutely, Joe, you're right, that was CPD.

Joe:

Right, thank you very much. So coming back to Jenny now. I think you've covered this, but again it would be good to revisit, I think. Does there need to be a range of resources used in CPD?

Jenisa:

No, it's up to you. If you want to do 35 hours or 15 hours of reading, then that's fine. But I think for your benefit more than anything, I think it's good to try to use different formats of CPD.

Joe:

Okay. The next question is very specific. I'm virtually retired and only treat animals with acupuncture one morning a week. How much CPD do I need to do, and does it need to be broad-based or just on acupuncture topics?

Jenisa:

Yes, so as long as you stay on the register you need to comply with the full requirement. It doesn't matter how much work you do or if it's paid work or not. So it's up to you, probably focus on the area that you're involved in, but you might want to expand your horizon a bit and do other forms of CPD. We leave that judgment call up to you.

Joe:

So I've got a couple of questions about online CPD now. So the first question is: I struggle with technology. I attended the BSAVA virtual congress but couldn't access any certification. So does that mean I can't apply that for my CPD?

Jenisa:

If you mean certificates, it's not—you don't have to add a certificate to your CPD. The best way to evidence your CPD is to reflect on it. So at least you're here now, so you're doing great with technology.

Joe:

Thank you very much. And then are there any limits on how much online-based CPD can be submitted?

Jenisa:

No. It's up to you. We don't dictate to you how to fulfill your requirement. You know best how to do that. You're a professional. You know how to fulfill your learning needs. Again, I think it can be good to try to mix it up a little bit and especially hopefully as we can go back to more normality to change between self-directed and face-to-face CPD. But again, it will depend on you and your circumstances and where you're at in your career.

Joe:

Thank you. Will we need to record the planning of CPD from next year as well as the reflection?

Jenisa:

Yes, it's part of the cycle just to plan, do, record and reflect. But as I've showed you in one CPD, you can add objectives really easily and you can also record future CPD activities using the record function. But not everything has to be planned. So I think that's important to emphasize.

Joe:

We've got a few more questions for Jenny, then back to Sue. So reading and pondering is the best way of learning for me. Listening to online CPD is not good. Can I log more reading?

Jenisa:

Yeah, yes, I feel like I'm just saying yes, but yes you can do it. And whatever works for you is fine. Just remember to record it and reflect on it so that CPD is properly evidenced.

Joe:

Okay, the next question is: is the 25% reduction to the CPD hourly requirement being applied this year?

Jenisa:

No. So we reduced the CPD requirements by 25% last year. This year has gone back to the normal hours. But we do have the flexibility of the CPD requirements, so you're able to pause your CPD. So we're trying to use that as generously as we can. So if you're struggling with your CPD you're able to retrospectively pause your CPD or get in contact with us and then we can help you to sort this out.

I think one of the best advice I can give you is if you're struggling with your CPD to get in touch. I think many wait until they're non-compliant a few years down, and then they call us almost in tears. And what I hear quite a lot is "I wish I got in touch sooner" because it just, it's been a great relief just to talk to someone about my CPD and be given some great ideas of what I can do for CPD and some advice. So so please do get in touch if you're struggling.

Joe:

Thank you. Then one more question for Jenny. I prepare presentations and upload the final version as evidence. Is this appropriate, I'm assuming as CPD?

Jenisa:

Yes, sounds great. You can add it as evidence, but you can just add your reflections as well. So I think reflections and just thinking about your learning and the impact is the best way to evidence your CPD.

Joe:

Thank you. And then sorry, one more question for Jenny. Are notes taken during an event like a virtual webinar like this one—do they count as reflection?

Jenisa:

Yeah, well depends on what your notes were, but yes they can be, yeah.

Joe:

Okay, thank you very much, Jenny. Then back to Sue. Okay, thank you very much. So I'm a university lecturer. Is there a formula, in inverted commas, I can use for CPD relating to lecture prep, such as X hours per contact hour?

Sue:

This is one of the questions where I'm going to say no. If there is, I'm not aware of it. It has to be common sense because I don't actually think that there is. I don't think it's possible to apply a formula because the amount of time, certainly I would spend preparing some stuff is very different to the amount of time I'd spend for others. So no, it's not—it's again, it's common sense. But if you're a lecturer and you're keeping up to date, then you're going to far exceed your requirement for college because the amount of reading that you have to do to keep up to date, the amount of research that you have to do. No, there isn't a formula that I'm aware of unless Jenny's aware of something like that. I don't think there is anything, is there?

Jenisa:

No, just count the time where learning takes place, but no magic formula, I'm afraid.

Sue:

Not at all.

Joe:

Okay, so there's a point, I suppose, that somebody has made that probably is quite relevant to your previous point, Sue. If we've done 35 hours of CPD in a year and then see a course late in that calendar year that would be useful, it wouldn't seem to be cost-effective for my employer to pay for it if the hours can't be counted towards the current year's CPD. It's not really a question apart from how does she justify that with her employer, I suppose, but didn't know whether you had...

Sue:

But to me that would be disappointing because if it's something that's of benefit to you and helps improve your professional abilities, then I would hope your employer would support you to do that. So you know, this shouldn't be about box-ticking. This shouldn't be about "I've done 35 hours, stop." This is all about what you feel you need to do to improve, to improve yourself. And all of us will do more than 35 hours a year subconsciously because we're constantly checking, reading, looking stuff up. And that is all a way of improving our ability to do our job.

So I think you need to have a conversation with your employer and say, "Look, this is the benefits to me. This is the benefits to the practice." And of course one of the things that perhaps we should say about, which was referred to with that bereavement course, you know, you go on a bereavement course, you do 35 hours of CPD, but it doesn't stop there because you go back to the practice afterwards and you'll talk to the receptionists, you'll talk to the nurses, you'll talk to the other vets, you'll pass on your knowledge to them, you'll exchange ideas with them. So CPD that you do yourself where you can benefit others from it benefits the whole practice. It doesn't just benefit you. So I would suggest it's quite shortsighted of your employer not to allow you to do that. But then, you know, hopefully you can have that conversation with them and they'll allow you to do it.

Joe:

Thank you. So last few questions. As an editorial board member for a veterinary journal, can I count my review of submitted manuscripts as CPD?

Sue:

Absolutely, absolutely. Why not? Because you're reading, you're researching, you're commenting, you're reflecting. Absolutely, yes, that's all CPD.

Joe:

I've recently moved to a new company and I'm working through online training related to that company's procedures and software to fulfill my role. Does this count as CPD?

Sue:

Yes, I don't see why it shouldn't. Again, because you're training to fulfill your role. It's only the same as if you were training to do a certificate in orthopedics. So yeah, absolutely, I do not see that that shouldn't be CPD.

Joe:

We've got two more questions. One is—I'm not sure if this is too specific to the circumstance—I'm doing OV training for equine exports, which says it counts for 4 hours of CPD. It took 30 hours last time I did it 3 years ago. Now all legislation and processes have changed. It will take me more than 4 hours. I'm not sure if there's any comment that's applicable to that.

Sue:

I mean, I suppose that again, this is all about flexibility, isn't it? Because you'll see an article in a veterinary journal. It will say "This counts as half an hour CPD if you read it." But if it takes you longer to read it, if you cross-reference it with other stuff, if you reflect on it, then it's considerably more than that. I think it depends on how long it takes you to do it and the reflection that's involved with it. So just because it says 4 hours doesn't mean to say it's 4 hours of CPD. So for me, that would be my opinion, would be that CPD is as long as it takes you to do.

Joe:

Thanks, Sue. So we've got two more questions. I manage a team of 30 vets and we carry out fortnightly meetings to discuss issues relating to our job. Can this count as CPD, and how should it be recorded in terms of topic name as we don't just focus on one subject?

Sue:

Absolutely. And that's really important CPD because again, I keep using this phrase, you're exchanging ideas, you're reflecting on stuff, you're learning from each other, you're sharing experiences. So that is absolutely right. As to what it would go under, I suppose that would be workplace-based, would you say Jenny, that would be case discussions around there? But again, you know, we don't get, we shouldn't get too hung up about which category it comes under. It's the fact you're doing it. And I think that's some of the best CPD that you can do because that's really excellent reflection and sharing each other's experiences. So yes, very definitely that should...

Jenisa:

Yeah, I would agree with that, Sue. And using the app you can record some voice notes as well about reflective discussions that you had.

Joe:

And the final question. So you might have some experience you could share. I do a lot of reading but I never log it because I'm not sure how to do it properly to document my activity. What counts as evidence?

Sue:

Do you want to take that, Jenny, or shall I? I mean, what I would do is, as Richard suggested in the pre-recorded bit, I would just dictate after I've read the article. So go onto the app, go onto the dictation and say, "I've just read a really great article on updates on treatment for whatever it happens to be." I think that, and reflect on it. So that's all you need to do. We're veterinary professionals and I think a lot of this all boils down to trust and our professional responsibilities. So you don't have to prove you've done anything as long as you have recorded it and you've reflected on it. That is the important thing for me. I don't know, would you want to add to that, Jenny, at all? Any comments?

Jenisa:

No, perfect answer. So yes, just remember to reflect.

Sue:

And we've done a webinar about reflection, so if you're not sure you can go back to that.

Joe:

Thank you very much. That's all the questions.

Sue:

So can I just say before we finish, because obviously I'm a vet and everybody's terrified of college, these guys in education you've met, Jenny now, are really really approachable. So please, if anybody's struggling, anybody's not sure, email, pick up the phone. They're there, they really are there to help. So please make use of them.

Jenisa:

Me done over to you, Jenny.

Jenisa:

No, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time. And if you have any questions you can contact us at [email protected]. Thank you so much and have a nice afternoon.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to our CPD webinar today. My name is Jenny Soroskotep and I work for the education department in the RCVS. I'll be hosting this webinar today together with Tim Hutchinson. Do you want to introduce yourself Tim?

Yes good afternoon everybody my name is Tim Hutchinson and I'm a veterinary surgeon managing partner at Luck Meet Veterinary Group in South Oxfordshire.

Great and we also have my colleagues from the comms department Deborah and Joe who will be taking care of all the practical bits today.

But let's get started. So our focus today is to talk about CPD that takes place in the workplace and I'll start with just going through some of the practical bits the CPD policy and the RCVS requirement and then I'll hand over to Tim for the more interesting part which is him talking about all the great CPD that you can do in the workplace. I'll then give you a few tips of how you can record it and then we'll focus on your questions.

So we have received quite a lot of questions part of the registration process and most of them will cover as we go along but we will also dedicate quite a lot of time at the end to answer questions but if you have any questions just pop them in the chat box and Joe will collate them all and we'll just answer as many as we can at the end of the session.

So let's start off. So CPD it's all about lifelong learning it's about continuing to improve your knowledge and your skills and maintaining them. The veterinary world changes so quickly so it's so important to stay up to date so that you can provide the best service or care for your clients or patients because there's always can it be new drugs new technology new research or you know other ways to communicate for example. So that's why CPD is so important.

And as I'm sure you know the CPD requirement is mandatory as part of the code of conduct so veterinary surgeons need to do 35 hours per calendar year and veterinarians 15 hours but the RCVS doesn't dictate what type of CPD you need to do. You're all professionals you know what learning needs you have and what format works best for you. So it's all about thinking about what's best for you and how the best way for you to learn it in what format you feel works best for you. But as long as you stay on the RCVS register whether you're a veterinary nurse or a veterinary surgeon you need to comply with the requirement so it doesn't matter if you're not working or if you're working part-time or in not-for-profit organization as long as you're on the register you need to fulfill the minimum requirement.

So CPD should be relevant to your role or future aspirations for example. So it means that if you're not in clinical practice you don't have to do clinical CPD it should be relevant to you. So but also even if you are in a clinical world all of your CPD doesn't have to be clinical CPD should be relevant to you as a professional.

And I know from talking to many veterinary nurses and surgeons that are struggling to meet the requirement many of them are only recording the sort of the formal CPD courses or webinars and not thinking about all the great CPD that they're undertaking every day as part of your work. And I think that might have to do with either not recognizing the learning opportunities or not knowing how to record it. So hopefully this webinar will help you with that.

And record we have as part recording portal is one CPD it's available as a web version and as an app and if you use that you'll see a lot of categories that might help you to see the wide range of CPD activities you can count. So we have the formal which is more of the thing you think of like for CPD courses congresses or in the last year distance learning. There's also self-directed CPD self reading research which can be a great form of CPD as long as it's recorded.

But also there's also the subcategory workplace-based CPD so learning and development doesn't have to take place outside of work as I'm sure you're all aware of and it does count towards your CPD you don't have to go on a course in order to meet the CPD requirement. So I will now hand over to Tim he'll talk to you a bit more about his approach to CPD and workplace-based CPD.

Thank you Jenny. Just looking back over the last 30 years when I graduated there wasn't the same formal requirement or certainly no requirement for 35 hours of CPD logging and that came in in the early years that I was in practice and with it the old paper record cards for recording it. And it's strange that we're now in a situation where there's so much learning opportunity out there that there's a misconception within the profession that actually we're only learning if we're not in our practice and somewhere else learning from other people in a lecture theater or in a practical wet lab somewhere.

And looking back at us that is obviously we were learning things 30 years ago without going on courses so we must have been doing it in practice and that made me think well what really is CPD. And if we think we hear CPD all the time we're so used to the acronym but continuing professional development continuous professional development it's something that's ongoing it's something that we're doing on an ongoing basis it's not just a pick up and leave that's separate from our work it's part and parcel of our day-to-day activity and professionals so it's anything that is relevant to what we are doing as a professional person within our within our careers not necessarily clinical there's nothing in that that actually says it's all clinical CPD and development it's as learning and and going on.

I often joke that we call it veterinary practice because we spend the career trying to practice at what we're doing and then eventually give up and retire when we realize that we're never going to get there but it's all about ongoing development. And so on that basis what really is CPD and the way that I often speak to the staff in my practice to think about it is that if you can do something today that you couldn't do yesterday or you know something today that you couldn't do that you didn't know yesterday and if those things are relevant to what you're going to be doing on a day-to-day basis in your career or in your career going forwards then the process by which you got from A to B is CPD.

Now it may be that that CPD was involved with taking part in a webinar or in a lecture theater or in the seminar but actually a lot of that is what you do on a day-to-day basis and learn from your colleagues. So just looking at this reflective cycle that's there on on the screen in front of us this is how we learn this is how we develop. We have an experience we do something and then we reflect back on that experience and and think about what we've done and conceptualize those reflections until we can decide that we're going to plan to do something differently next time we come to do it and then do it again and keep going around that circle. And this is CPD.

So the whole point about what we're doing is the reflection aspect to it. We could go and sit in the lecture theater and be given a certificate at the end of it and feel that we've achieved CPD because we've got a certificate that said that we spent an hour learning about something but unless we're really reflecting on what we've listened to and then planning how we're going to put it into practice that really hasn't been worthwhile CPD. And yet we're quite glad to recognize that and put it on our CPD records but the real stuff that we do in practice somehow we don't seem to recognize and put on our CPD records.

So if there's going to be a surgical procedure that we haven't attempted before we know how to perform surgery we know that we are capable of that surgical procedure then we're going to be doing it for the first time we will need to plan in advance what we're going to do for that and that planning is CPD. When we've performed that surgical procedure we'll then reflect on it and how did it go which bits worked really well I'll make a note of those which bits perhaps didn't work so well why didn't they work quite so well and make a note of those what can I plan to do differently next time and then next time we have that procedure again we can then put in place these plans and then review them and reflect on them again that's CPD it should be on our record cards.

And in fact as the younger you are in practice and the more recently graduated almost everything that you're doing on a day-to-day basis could be clustered CPD because when you're first starting out in practice everything is new. So I think CPD is less about what we're doing and it's about how we're thinking about it it's about the reflecting on the activity so it's not a separate thing from from what we're doing as our jobs it's part and parcel of our job but the key thing is that it's that reflection and planning and moving forwards with it.

And I think the other lovely thing about this reflective cycle is that there are so many opportunities in there for involving other people. We may have mentors in practice graduates will have vet GDP advisors and at every stage around this reflective cycle you can involve somebody else. So if you are doing a procedure for the first time you can have somebody there watching and interacting with you. When you're reflecting afterwards you can reflect with your advisor how things went and use your advisor to help you plan for what you're going to do next time.

But that doesn't just have to be limited to the vet GDP graduate phase it's a good way of developing a habit but it's something that we can carry on throughout life and I know that so many practices will hold regular clinical meetings discussion groups mortality morbidity rounds and these are all opportunities for discussing and reflecting and planning what we're going to do next time and in such a way then this is really the CPD itself.

In terms of does this all have to be clinical no. So we've all had these consultations where they really haven't gone as you wanted them to go. You've been discussing with a client what your plan of action will be and really the consultation hasn't gone where it wanted to or a consultation where the client left the room with a bad feeling. Again that's something that we've done we can reflect on that in itself and and think about what went on. We can again conceptualize this put it into different contexts speak for the people how might they have challenged it what could we have done differently and plan for how we would have that consultation again next time. Difficult conversations that we're going to have with people difficult phone calls that we need to make again how we approach those and what we do with them are all part and parcel of CPD.

And if we're going to make this a really worthwhile thing for lifelong learning then linking it into an appraisal system. I would hope that everybody in practice has at least an annual appraisal and hopefully opportunities throughout the year to touch base with with mentors or employers about how you're developing. But setting yourself a planet that appraisal where am I now in my career what do I need to achieve over the next 12 months and then planning ahead for some of that and whether that's learning it in practice or whether it's needing to go out of practice to learn it from somewhere else. But we have at our fingertips a massive resource which is all the clinical cases that we're dealing with on a day-to-day basis all the interaction that we have with our colleagues and with clients as well and these are all CPD learning opportunities.

Jenny I think we have some questions that were posed in their thumbs.

Yeah I'm just going to show quickly how to record just give you some tips for how to record your CPD and then we'll head over some questions.

So hopefully that's my phone and so we've been mentioning one CPD quite a lot today so that's our recording portal. It's available both an app as a website and we did some webinars in December last year for new users and more experienced users so I'm just going to show you quickly how to use the plan and record session but you can refer back to those webinars just to get a more in-depth demonstration.

So in the planning section you're able to add objective you can edit your objectives. So as I said before an objective doesn't have to be something you do for the next year it could just be that you want to review evidence for diabetes and as Richard say using your phone you can just dictate into it rather than typing if you want to. So I'll just on my phone it's next to the space button and I'll just press the microphone review evidence for diabetes. And then yeah I'll just do that and you could put a description but sometimes it's I think is enough with the title and the due date again is not a man you don't have to put it there but I'll give myself a week confirm and then save.

So then it's saved here as part of my objectives and you can see I don't have any time recorded against it yet. So now you've added the objective or plan and it take you less than a minute so it is something that's really quick to do and then to record it it's just the basic information the topic the duration the date you can put a start date or end date if you want to and then the activity types this is what both me and Sue have been talking about the formal the workplace based and the self-directed. So there's a list of activities under each subcategory but we also have other but don't worry too much about the categories you can always add some information in in the notes section and and you see you know don't stress about making sure that you always get the right category that's not the most important thing.

And then you're able to link it to an objective so that's how you'll record the time in the objective. So you could just link it to anything or you can also press the plus sign yeah there and you can create an objective here which will then be saved in your plan section. You can add notes and you're also able to add a attachment so for example a photo a voice notes or anything like that. So if you have a certificate you can take a photo of that you might have some notes or you want to take a photo of slides for example if you're going to a presentation you can use one CPD as your learning journal not just an app for recording your hours.

Okay so Tim the first question is what specific workplace activities can counter CPD?

Hopefully as I as I illustrated in in that brief introduction really anything. Anything that you are doing that makes a difference to your day-to-day life as a professional person. So if something that you are doing and you're reflecting on it you're going to be doing something differently next time and that's going to help you progress then it is CPD.

Thank you. How are we to find time for CPD after a long tiring day at work does your workplace have to give you time to complete CPD?

I think one of the key things here is that we should try and get down to the habit of viewing that CPD is something that is always separate from our day-to-day work. There are certain examples where where CPD is separate from our day-to-day work if we if we do need to go on a course attend the seminar take part in a wet lab training exercise or something but a lot of CPD is part and parcel of what we're doing. So it's really trying to integrate it into your everyday life. The one CPD app that's there I mean we all carry these things around in our pockets all the time and you know apart from posting pictures of cats on social media playing the piano or hurling abuse at each other we're missing a golden opportunity because it's there at our fingertips. And if we can just log something that we do actually you know I've just noticed something differently that I've been doing what was it that I was doing differently however how have I done that differently how am I going to use that again next time and just punching that into the one CPD app and it's there and past loving. So at the end of a long tiring day there probably shouldn't need to be an awful lot to have to do with that.

Thank you. Is time spent teaching a student class to CPD?

I think the honest answer is it can be. If again it's something that if you are teaching somebody and learning yourself something in the process so that then next time you're teaching somebody you'll be using that to help that next student then it is CPD. Just because it isn't clinical doesn't mean to say it's not CPD. So you know we we probably castrate dogs on a very regular basis and the first couple of times that we castrated dogs there was a lot of CPD involved with them after that it isn't. The first couple of times that we're training students there's a lot of CPD involved with it but there may then be other techniques that we can develop for training students that will be new things and again that's all CPD.

Do you have any advice on recognizing and encouraging CPD opportunities in the workplace for some team members who might not be thinking about CPD in the way you're describing?

I think it's all it's all habit forming and what I would would suggest to anybody on this call is you know spend five minutes at the end of the day today is there something different that you have done today or is there something different that you're going to do tomorrow as a result of what you did today because if there is then you're developing and that's CPD. So it's not a case of trying to look for specific CPD opportunities as things that are going to come along that are different from what you're doing day-to-day basis it's it's part and parcel of what you're doing.

We've just had a question to you Tim that has been submitted if you learn a small nugget of new information how long would you record this CPD for for example 10 minutes an hour etc.?

I think the key thing with that is the length of time that you are sort of reflecting on it you know what did I notice about that that new nugget of information what did it mean for me what should I do with it and plan for next time and that's that's the the key time of that CPD. It's just the same as going to a lecture so you spend an hour sitting in a lecture theater listening to a lecture you may record an hour of CPD but actually the really useful time is the time that you spend afterwards thinking about what you did in that lecture and planning what you're going to do with that afterwards. So time itself I think I don't need to get hung up on absolute amounts there's there's so much out there so many opportunities out there that really about 35 hours you're not it very very quickly even if it's in in small parts.

Thank you I've got a couple of questions for you Jenny now. The first one is are certificates required for in workplace CPD?

No and I think this is something why people feel a bit insecure according CPD that take place in the workplace. I always get the questions how do I evidence my CPD and the best way to evidence your CPD is to reflect on it. Reflection is much more valuable than adding a certificate to your CPD record. So you don't need to you don't need a certificate you just reflect on your CPD and that's the best evidence that you can provide.

Thank you. How do I log practical experience that I gain in the workplace that is part of working towards a CPG CPD objective such as improving a certain practical skill?

Yeah so if you use one CPD you'll see in the sub categories there's workplace based CPD. You can choose one of them and if you feel that they don't quite fit in there's the other one and you can just add that and record it. And if you think anything is missing from one CPD just let us know when we can try to incorporate that into the categories but don't worry too much about the categories it's you know it's more important that you do the learning that then you record it in the exact right category. You can always add some information in in the text boxes.

Thank you and then we've got a few questions about what counts the CPD Jenny so yeah and the first one is does research for current cases count as CPD?

Yes of course it's a great form of CPD.

Does reading journals count as CPD and is there a limit to the number of hours that reading can be recorded as CPD?

No there isn't. I think this goes back to 2016 when we changed the 10 hours ad hoc CPD requirement where you couldn't no longer have just 10 hours ad hoc reading. What we said was you can still count reading as CPD and it can be an excellent form of CPD but you need to add some evidence. So now using one CPD you can just reflect on it and there is your evidence for reading.

Thank you. Does teaching surgery count as CPD for the teaching vet?

Yes as as Tim said this as long as you're learning from it then yeah CPD and you know it also it might not just be what you're doing there if you do any preparation for it that can also count as your CPD.

Do keep in touch days counter CPD?

Yes as long as you're learning from it then you know it's not just about it's maintaining your skills and improving them so keeping in touch taste can be great forms of CPD.

And the last one Jenny for you I live in Canada but would like to keep my UK license do you know which CPD can be used towards both licenses?

Well I don't know about the requirement in Canada but the RCVS requirement is very flexible so it doesn't have to be CPD that you undertake in the UK. Anywhere in the world is fine you just need to record it in English using the one CPD recording portal but you don't have to the CPD itself doesn't have to take place in you know be in English.

Thank you so back to Tim for a couple of questions now. Does doing something new that you've learned about counter CPD? E.g. dental radiography is new to our practice I've done as much online training as I could find but I find I learn most by doing it.

Absolutely and with something like that there's a massive amount of CPD involved. So from deciding is this a thing that we're going to move into understanding how the equipment works what you're going to do with it learning how to use the equipment learning to interpret the x-rays that you're getting from them that is all CPD. If it gets to the point where you're no longer having to think about what you're seeing and reflecting on it then then it stops being CPD but certainly for for when you're starting using it and planning to use it yes absolutely.

Thank you. I had a lot of one-to-one mentoring surgical and clinical practical sessions with my mentor both in theater and outside during my two years of new graduate programme which have been important for my professional development may I report them as in-house CPD?

Again absolutely and certainly going forward now with the vet GDP there's so much recording of this activity through the vet GDP portal which automatically becomes CPD going forward. So for graduates entering practice now they don't need to be looking for an additional 35 hours on top of the vet GDP that is that is all part of it.

So Jenny a few questions back for you now. Do I need a minimum number of hours of in-person CPD not online?

No so we don't specify what type of CPD you have to do. 35 or 15 hours is the minimum but most vets and nurses will do considerably more but you don't have to do you know 10 hours of webinar 10 hours of courses. It's up to you you're professional you know what works best for you and as long as you keep a record of it and reflect and you feel that it's beneficial to you then then it's good CPD.

Okay the next question what are the CPD requirements during maternity leave especially if I'm off for a year?

Well it depends. You first need to consider if you want to stay on the register. So if you are a vet and going on parental leave you can choose to go non-practicing then you don't have to worry about CPD for that time and then you can come back on the register anytime. If you're a veterinary nurse you can remove temporarily remove your name from the register and restore when you want to come back to work. If you feel like you need if you need to stay on the register you can either then choose to just do informal CPD you know keeping in touch days will count to CPD or you can also go into the web version of one CPD to pause your CPD for up to six months and that's not only for parental leave it can be for illness or for anything else that you feel like you're struggling with CPD or you need to take some time away from work and you can apply for a pause.

Thank you. Oh there are designated people at the RCVS that check everyone's CPD records do we have to make our CPD public if a client asks to review it for example?

We do do CPD audit so if you're included in an audit you'll be contacted and will ask to review your records. Than that you don't have to send them to us on a regular basis and yeah your CPD record is personal to you. It's up to you if you want to share it with with your employer or anyone else but they're personal to you and no one else can have it will have access to them.

When does the CPD allowance restart every year?

So yes so the CPD year is a calendar year so it's January to December because I know it's a lot of confusion when when both vets and nurses do the renewal if it's March to March or November to November but it's January to December. So when you do your renewal in March you are confirming that you met the requirement for the last year for example.

Thank you and then Jenny or Tim I'm not sure you might be able to both give your perspectives on this. How do you record research and writing work when it's done on a consultancy basis under a confidential under a confidentiality agreement and can't be disclosed?

I mean I can start I think just focusing on the learning and and you know not go into too many details is what I you don't have to put all the details in your CPD just focus on learning and reflection really. I don't know if you have anything to add Tim?

Yeah I think the key thing is reflecting bit you can reflect on a lot of that without needing to diver divulge any information that was within it and break any confidence any confidentialities there. It's more about learning the learning the principles of things really reflecting on that.

Tim if we stay with you I've got a few questions that I think would be great if you could answer please. How should I set effective goals that are not too overwhelming?

Good question. Being realistic really and time is you know the time is a fixed thing we've all got the same amount of time but we can all do different things with that time. We've all got different challenges and different things going on in our lives so I think we just have to be realistic on a personal basis. What do I want to achieve can I achieve that in the time that I've got available is it a realistic goal for myself and break it down into small chunks.

Thank you. Do you have any tips for new graduate RVNs on selecting CPD? I'm hoping to hone my general skills this year and I'm struggling where to start.

New graduate RVNs again it's no difference really from what we've been talking about with with vets. With that as an RVN you've got opportunities with loads of cases going through practice to learn from and the team around you to learn from as well. So again it's it's all the new things that you're doing all the new things that you're learning what are you doing today as an RVN that you weren't doing yesterday as an RVN and again that's CPD.

So we're moving now to some questions we've had submitted during the webinar. The first one is I found many web pages with CPD webinars which were recorded can they be counted towards my CPD and how do I record them?

Yes I can ask that yes of course they can be recorded and you just then use one CPD and put in the topic the type of activity and and the time and then reflect on your learning and and if that has an impact on on you on your behavior or your you as a professional.

So gentlemen you may be able to answer this one too. It seems that I can't record CPD for the same topic twice I'm frequently building up information about the same topic.

Yeah I've been discussing this with our developers. You can either choose a different topic or if you want to you can add to the topic that you first recorded. But it is something we're working on and I know that at the moment you'll have to put like one at the end of it for example just to be able to record it but I'll I'll highlight it again to our developers and and see how we can resolve it.

This is quite a broad question based on your definition of CPD how do you quantify CPD in terms of hours if it wasn't a seminar or a workshop or a conference?

You want me to tackle that one Jenny? I think the key thing is just being honest with yourself about you know the time that you've spent yet thinking about it and what you're going to do with the information that you've learned from it. So there'll be so many five-minute snippets of CPD throughout the day and you know quick reflections that really it's just a case at the end of the day of sort of notching those up or at the end of the week or whenever you you add them into your record. I think we've become accustomed to to going on courses that count for a day or several hours or whatever so we're used to putting down big chunks. But given that CPD is about ongoing development and isn't something that we pick up and put down it's their part and parcel of our everyday lives a really good one CPD record would look absolutely deluged with you know five-minute snippets of information.

Yeah it's I think it's about you know thinking about the time when learning takes place whether that's the actual learning or the reflection and then recording that. And use your judgment there's no way you know no one is going to call you up and just in question if you if you spend 10 minutes or 20 minutes doing that. You know we do trust you you're professionals so use your judgment and and think about the time when learning takes place and that's fine.

Thank you. Is there a maximum number of hours in total that you can log as workplace CPD?

No there's no limits on types of CPD so as long as it's beneficial to you then all your CPD requirement can be by CPD.

Do reading publications and reports also require reflection in our CPD record?

Yes I think from next year reflection is mandatory as part of the CPD requirement but I think it's something that you do anyway you reflect on what you're learning. And if you're not used to using one CPD it's very easy to reflect. So you don't have to reflection is not a long essay for you to put down your thoughts. You can just you can either use the prompts in one CPD that either guides you through the reflection process or there's a more flexible approach so you can record an audio note for example that could be if you like to reflect with others you could be over a cup of coffee with a colleague or you can do it yourself and just talk into your phone or you can use dictate button for example and dictate which makes it really easy. So there's no extra paperwork at the end of the day and you can enjoy other things than reflecting on your recording and reflecting on your CPD.

Thank you. If a vet doesn't meet the 35-hour CPD requirements in a year can they make up those hours?

So we no longer have the rolling requirement that we used to where there was this you know 105 or 45 over three years. So if you don't meet the requirement over one year then when you do your annual renewal you'll declare that that you didn't meet them and and the reasons for it. And we're likely to contact you then as part of a CPD audit but you can still renew your registration and just need to have a plan for what you're going to do in the next year to make sure that you meet the 35 or 15 hours.

Thank you. If I registered two weeks ago do I still need to take 35 hours of CPD or is there a reduced number of hours?

Yes so the requirement is calculated for rata depending on when you join.

Thank you. I presume this all applies to vets in industry as well as vets in practice we have a lot of workplace learning and training but it isn't all clinical.

Yeah absolutely as we said whatever is relevant to you as a professional. So a lot in your role for example might not be even you know there'll be so much more than just the veterinary learning it'll be not reading lots of guidelines and and legislation and things like that. And I know and you know especially in it coveted times we've learned so much in the last year that some of them you might want to forget but you know we've been thinking about before. So absolutely it's thinking about holistically as new as a professional what's beneficial to you and then you can record it as CPD.

I'm staying with you Jenny are there any plans to increase what we can attach for example photos and documents to the free reflection area of the one CPD app? It would be useful to be able to include notes just by taking a picture for example to record information in one place but the limit of three attachments restricts this facility.

It's something that we are keeping under review. Please send us the feedback so that we can have it and review it with our IT team. There is a cost and the resource implications for for having more storage so it's just getting that balance. But if if you feel that it that it's something that would be really useful it's something we can take forward and review again. And there's a there's an opportunity to feedback within the one CPD platform is there Jenny?

Yeah so there's a little contact button or an envelope in the app and just contact us and it'll get the feedback straight to us or our development team.

There's a there's a point that has just come in it would be useful to have a more structured reflective area on the one CPD app. Further advice on how to set objectives and link these would also be beneficial.

Well we have the there's three prompts that you can use that guides you through the reflection which is how did the CPD relates to your plan, what are the key things you learn and what impact will it have which is the main points of reflection. So you can use those three point prompts within one CPD or the free reflection. I don't know if you have any other advice Tim?

Not particularly no. It is all it is all habit and I must be telling the worst person that doing that my my cpd one CPD app isn't as populated as it should be because I keep forgetting to go into it but I blame that on on age and senility and that there are there are younger people out there who are far more adept with with technology and far better at it. But I think it is purely habit.

For me that's one question one remaining question that it it might be a little bit specific but I'll ask it anyway. I'll be working as an OV in a non-clinical setting for the first time do you have any suggestions on what kind of workplace CPD I can do apart from improve international courses and OV conferences?

There anything. Where does an OVA in a non-clinical setting for the first time. Well basically if you're doing something if you're working in whatever way shape or form if it's in an OV non-clinical setting for the first time you're doing a lot of what you will be doing will be new. So it's an ideal opportunity for for using that as CPD. If you're doing things for the first time and you're having to think about what you're doing and reflect back on it so that next time you do it you're going to be improving what you're doing and changing how you're tackling things then again that's CPD. So just because it isn't clinical doesn't mean to say that you can't use exactly the same process.

Jenny we've got a point that has just come in it will be more useful to have access to one CPD via a PC rather than just the app. Would you just like to confirm?

Yeah so one CPD is available as the web version so you can go to our website and then you can access one CPD on the web or on the app or an app. So you can use either you can use both it's it's up to you. So you don't have to use the app if you don't want to you can just use the web version of one CPD. So it'll be on on the computer and just just to clarify the and the login is on the top right of the RCVS website so you you can log in that way.

Yes exactly. Thanks and it looks like we've we've covered all of the questions that we've received. I don't know if anybody has anything further to ask?

Oh I had an injury in 2018 which kept me out of work for three months then another three months in 2019. I've just recently started working in the UK as a vet again there was an important lack of CPD hours in all of that time would that be a negative for me in my records?

I mean it's going back quite a few years so I think the most important thing is that you you have a plan for for making sure that you're up to date now and and that you're doing what you need to do. But if you have any concerns you know just contact us cpd rcbs.org or give us a call and you know we can talk about your specific situation.

I think that's just one final point Jenny just to thank you for letting them know about the guided reflection section they just found it and it's going to be really useful I think.

Okay excellent. I'm I'm really sorry about the the one CPD demo but we do have two demos on our website so you can find it there and there's one showing planning recording and reflecting. So there's lots of information there so hopefully that will be useful.

And Jenny I can send them the links in the follow-up email.

Great. No more questions coming through so I think we've reached the end of those.

Excellent well thank you so much for for attending today and I hope you found it useful.

Hello everyone. Welcome to this lunchtime webinar. My name is Jenny Sorensen and I'm the lead for postgraduate education in the RCVS. Joining me today are two veterinary surgeons, Professor Steven May and Shauna McIntyre. So we're doing two CPD webinars this week. On Thursday we have one about what counts as CPD, but today we're focusing on reflection.

Today I'm hoping to give you an overview of what reflection is, the role of reflection in the outcomes based CPD requirement, and just some practical tips of how you record reflection and how you can record it using One CPD. But the aim of today is really to focus on what you want to get out of it and things that you are unsure of. We have received questions as part of the registration process and we will be answering them as we go along, or we have a live Q&A session at the end of this webinar.

If you have any questions as I talk or as one of my colleagues talks, please just pop them in the chat box and my colleague Jo will then collate all the questions and we'll answer them at the end. So remember there are no stupid questions and make sure that you ask the questions that are relevant to you so that you can get the most out of this webinar.

Okay, let's get started. So we are changing the CPD requirement from next year to more outcomes focused requirements. So it means you still need to undertake the hours—35 hours for veterinary surgeons and 15 hours for veterinary nurses—but your approach to CPD will change slightly. So you'll use the outcomes based cycle of plan, do, record and reflect. And I know many of you are already doing that, but for some the biggest change is probably incorporating reflection into your CPD.

So what is reflection? Reflection as a basic explanation is about learning from experience and about that change that derived from your learning. How is that going to change your future situations? So it's something that most of us do instinctively, but making it part of the CPD requirement will be a more deliberate process. And reflection really isn't a tick box exercise. It's one of the most common comments or questions that we get. And I think as with everything in life, if you make it into a tick box exercise it's more likely to be one. But I hope that as you get more familiarized with what reflection is, how to record it, you'll see the value of reflection. And remember that reflecting as a professional is quite different than reflecting as a student. We're not after a reflective essay here. It's just about thinking about your learning and changes from that learning.

And we've developed One CPD, which is a recording portal that's available both as an app and a website, to make it as easy for you as possible to record your reflections. And I'll give you a short demo towards the end of this webinar just to show you how to use it. But to get us started, Professor Steven May has recorded a presentation about reflection. We have a shorter version as part of this live webinar, but you'll be able to access the full version on our website and my colleague Debra will send you the link to access it. So let's hear from Stephen.

[Stephen May's presentation]

All of us would claim legitimacy for our profession based on the fact that it is scientifically evidence-based and offers a service of value to society. For me, working in this positivist paradigm, it is important that our reflections are anchored in what I see as reality. The cycle of reflection often described by social scientists that confines individuals to exploring internal truths, linking emotion to experience and coming to conclusions on which to base action, is therefore inadequate. And in relation to our professional work could cynically be seen as confirming our own prejudices.

Therefore, as well as analyzing our feelings, our actions and the part that we have played in these, our professional reflective cycle needs to triangulate with scientific evidence and accepted practice based on the collective inputs and experience of all members of our professions. If we understand all this and are able to draw all these different threads together—appreciative as well as critical, the task and ourselves as agents of the task are internal truths and experience with external grounding—I would argue that we become more effective, more engaged and more balanced as clinicians.

At the same time, through reflection we are continually tackling the issues that are central to our well-being, namely the reasonable expectations that our clients can have of us and the reasonable expectations that we can have of ourselves.

[Back to Jenny]

Great, thank you Stephen. And I've had the pleasure of working with Stephen so I've learned a lot about reflections from him. So I would encourage you all to go and see his full presentation on our website. And on our website there's also lots of other videos about the benefits of reflection and how to do it.

So how do you do it in a practical sense? It's a process to evaluate the impact of a CPD activity and the impact it had on your professional needs. So it's important to take the time to review the CPD activity, to assess the benefit of your learning and if it's had any impact on you as a professional. So the focus here is really: did you learn anything and how can that influence your practice or your behavior?

So it could be any type of learning—learning as part of your everyday role, discussions with a colleague, reading, or more formal CPD, webinars and courses. And then after that just thinking about what did I learn and is that going to change anything. And reflection isn't separate to CPD learning. It's an essential element to learning, but it's got wider benefits than that. Reflection can validate your existing knowledge, your skills, but also challenge your current practice and beliefs.

And it's really important to take the time and allow yourself to take the time to reflect, not just on negative experiences and negative outcomes but also on positive ones. Because I think we think of reflection as something we have to do when something's gone wrong, which is not the case.

And what I hear quite a lot is: I didn't learn anything, do I still need to reflect? And reflecting that you didn't learn anything from your CPD is a completely valid conclusion. I think we've all been there. And it might be that the format of the CPD wasn't quite right for you, maybe it was the speaker, or the topic just wasn't pitched at the right level for you. And that can then help to guide your future choices. So that's why it's an outcomes based cycle—it's not a beginning or an end. So that reflection can then help you understand how you get the most of your CPD moving forward and help you plan future choices.

And as I said, reflection isn't a tick box exercise. One size doesn't fit all. It's all about what makes sense to you and what works for you. Reflection has got a different meaning and applications for everyone. So if you're new to reflections, maybe try doing it in a few different ways and see what works for you. And I think what's really important is that you're going to do it differently depending on the situation. So you could reflect on your own, with a mentor or a colleague, or as part of a group. And sometimes the reflective discussion as part of a group can be really beneficial and just lead to more ideas and actions of change.

But think that the purpose of CPD is to add the value to your service or to the care that you provide. So therefore it is really valuable to reflect on the changes resulting from your learning. And the key here is to make sharing your reflections and learning from your reflection an integral part of your practice. And I think most of us do reflect, but it is then how do I record it? How much detail do I need to put on the reflective notes? And again, think about what makes sense for you. Focus on just the key points: the learning, what did I learn, what were the key things I learned, and what impact does it have on you or your future practice? And then you might just want to put a few bullet points or go into more detail. It all depends on the situation. You could also include any future plans for learning and are you going to share your CPD outcomes with anyone or your reflections. And you can add that to your notes, but again it's what makes sense to you and the situation.

So as we tested the outcomes based cycle, we did a CPD pilot over two years and we found that many members who were not used to using reflection found it quite daunting just to have a blank piece of paper or a recording portal in front of them. So we developed three prompts just to help guide them through the process. And we have incorporated that into One CPD, so I'll show you later how that works. And it's just thinking about: how did the CPD relate to your learning objectives and plan? What are the key things you learned? And what impact has the CPD undertaken had on you as a professional or in your role?

So you can then follow these questions, but I'll show you a more flexible approach to reflection as well. But before that, we'll hear from Shauna McIntyre about her approach to reflection.

[Shauna McIntyre's presentation]

Hi, thanks very much Jenny. Jenny and the team just asked me to say a few words about reflection and how that fits into my experience as CPD. I wanted to reassure you all that I'm not organized enough to say that I record and reflect straight away after attending an event, but I think that's okay. Nor does everything that I do fit into a really strict CPD plan, and I think that's okay too. As Jenny said, it's CPD and our reflections are supposed to be an evolving process.

So as clinicians we're constantly reflecting on cases. We often take them home with us and we mull them over for hours on end often, but we're naturally the sort of people who develop because of our experiences and use them constructively. So I think we need to remember this when it comes to filling out our One CPD app reflections. It's not an onerous activity. It's something that we should all be used to doing in our day-to-day lives.

So I often start with CPD activities which match my objectives that I've made in my CPD plan, or sometimes simply areas that I want to improve in. And I use my reflections to consider whether I've fulfilled these objectives or whether there are further areas that I'd like to explore. And this leads me back around that CPD cycle to adjust my plan. It's an evolving process.

I quite like to do CPD in both clinical work and also other areas. And once I've completed the courses, I often like to take a few days to mull them over, think about what I've learned, and then maybe go back to the app. And actually if I do a few little bits of CPD all close together, I sometimes like to consider them all as one and reflect upon them as an entirety. And that helps me decide what I found most useful and what I've learned.

I like to think about whether the CPD I've done has challenged me, whether it's taught me something I can really use on a day-to-day basis. And I often note down key things that I've taken away from the CPD as well as a general feeling of how much I've enjoyed it.

When I first started using the One CPD app, I did like to use the three questions to guide my reflections, which made me think a bit more critically about my CPD. So these are: which objective does this relate to, what did I learn, what impact has this had? But now I'm a bit more familiar with the app and with doing reflections, I like to use the free comments a bit more so that I can be a bit more varied in my reflective comments. I'm also now a bit happier to reflect that perhaps the CPD I did didn't meet the objective I was hoping for.

And also having started the VetGDP training, I found it quite useful to be able to upload documents from the exercises in the course and that forms part of my reflection but is also there for future reference.

So I thought maybe it would be helpful to give you a couple of examples of the types of reflections that I've done recently. So I attended the BSAVA conference and this allowed me to attend a variety of different sessions, which was wonderful. And following the conference I was able to think really critically about what I attended. And I realized that some of the sessions I went to were in areas that I'm interested in and quite experienced in, so they didn't push me or challenge me as much as I would have liked to. So my reflection was that I need to go back, I need to review available resources, I need to think about challenging topics and look at areas where I might not be as confident clinically.

From a non-clinical example, I recently attended a leadership training course and I have done a few of these in the past. And during this course I was able to reflect in a twofold manner: one on the delivery of the course and secondly on the content. So for this recent course, I felt that I didn't really learn as many new concepts as I would have liked to, although it did allow me to go back and review things that I'd learned previously. The format of the course, however, was run online and I was able to reflect that I felt this was less conducive to me having an open conversation and discussion than it might have been if it was face to face.

I use this example particularly to say that it's okay in a reflection to say you didn't enjoy the CPD as much as you might have done, or you didn't get out of it what you would have liked to to meet your objectives. But when this happens I really like to go back to the planning stage and try to think about what I might look for next that might help meet that objective that I missed out on. So that choosing CPD is a responsive process rather than being stuck to a really prescriptive CPD plan.

So hopefully you've found this a helpful insight into how I look at the CPD reflective process. But if I'm really struggling, I like to go back to basics and I ask myself a few simple questions: what went well or not so well with the CPD? What did I learn? What will I take with me moving forward? And has this made me look for CPD in another specific area? And when I thought about this, I just come up with a few simple sentences to capture my reflections.

So hopefully this gives you a little bit of an overview of how I approach it and what I do, and I hope you found that helpful.

[Back to Jenny]

Great, thank you Shauna. So just before we go to questions, I will just show you how you can record your reflections using One CPD. Let's hope this works.

Okay, so in December we did a few webinars about how to use One CPD, so you can go back on our website and look at them. And I'll give you an overview to One CPD because I'll just go through the reflection section very quickly here.

So we have two different ways to reflect on your CPD. You have the guided reflections or the free format. And in the guided reflection you'll see the three prompts or the three questions that we developed as part of the CPD pilot. We have: how did it relate to your plan, what are the key things you learned, and the impact. So then you can just tap, click on in the text box and type in your answers and then move to the next one.

But what I think is really useful using the phone is that you can then dictate to your phone and it somehow magically just transforms it into text, which I find really useful. So I'll just show you how that works. So you'll see on my phone, next to the space bar I just have a microphone button. So if I click on that, I can just talk into my phone and it should transfer it into text.

Here are my reflections. See how easy it is.

And then I'll just tap on the keyboard to get back and then I can go to the next one. And again, you can use the dictate button there. And remember that you can choose how you want to use it. Do you want to go through each question or do you just want to answer one or two? Or as Shauna said, you might just want to, after the event, you could put in the key things you learned and then go back a few days later and think about the impact. It's completely up to you and none of the boxes are mandatory, so it's about how it works best for you.

So we have the guided reflection but also the free format. So you just click on free and then you'll have the open text box. So you can just add your reflections in there. And again, you can just type on the microphone button and dictate your reflection, or you can choose to add an attachment.

And the attachments you can add is a photo. So that could be a photo of most things, but for example might be some handwritten notes that you use as part of your reflections. And you can add that to your One CPD portfolio. You can also choose a photo from your gallery or add an attachment.

But what I think is really useful and makes reflection straightforward is to record an audio. So if you click on that one, the app will record the audio file which will then be saved to your portfolio. So that means that you don't have to take extra time at the end of the day to reflect on your CPD. It could just be something you do as part of your normal day. And it also gives you the flexibility to reflect in different ways. So you can reflect on your own, you have a few minutes over a cup of coffee with your colleague and record that reflection, or you can bring the your app into a team meeting or a team discussion and record those reflections. And then you just have it as part of your One CPD app.

So that's how easy it is to record your reflections using One CPD app. And as I said, we also have the website for those who do not want to use the mobile app.

So that is all from me. So let's move over to your questions and see what you'd like some further information about.

[Q&A Session]

Okay, thank you Jenny. The first set of questions are for you and this is a mix of questions we've received as part of people's registration and live.

So the first question is: is reflection a mandatory part of CPD in 2021?

So it becomes mandatory from 2022, so next year. The outcomes based requirement is part of the requirement, but I would encourage you to start using it already because practice really does make perfect. And the more you reflect on your CPD, the easier the process will become.

Thank you. And is there a format for reflection with specific headings?

Yes, as I showed you, you can use the guided reflection in One CPD, both on the app and on the website, just to guide you through the process. But you can also use the more flexible approach.

What is the RCVS looking for in our reflection?

So we are not looking to mark your reflection or to be the teacher here. It's really about what you get out of it, what makes sense for you. As long as your reflections are of benefit to you, that's the most important thing here. Okay, and that's what we're looking for.

And is there a reflection toolkit?

So we have some information in One CPD that will guide you through how to reflect, either a guided version or the free format. But also on our website we have quite a lot of information about reflection. We have Stephen's full presentation but also some shorter videos about reflection. And I know that Jo, as part of our social media profile, you also have some videos about vets and nurses reflecting on the CPD.

We do. There are quite a lot of resources on our social media and as you said Jenny, on our website. So there's quite a lot of resources available, including the recordings of these workshops about One CPD that we did before Christmas.

Are we going to be marked on our reflections?

So again, no. Reflection is part of the requirement, so you do need to incorporate it as part of the requirement. But again, it is what works for you. And we will all reflect in different ways. Me, Shauna and Stephen will all reflect in different ways. And if someone were to look at them, that would be completely different. So think about what makes sense for you and try different ways. But just focus on that learning and the impact on your learning because that's the main point of reflection. But think about what makes sense to you and what will be valuable for you if you go back and look at your reflections.

Great, thank you. After coming back from a break, I did some CPD to revise some topics but I didn't learn anything new. How do I reflect on this CPD?

So yes, so that could be your reflection. You didn't learn anything new. But then you might want to think about, okay, so what, and then plan future activities. So instead think about why you didn't learn anything. Was it not the right topic or format? And how can you approach it in another way?

Okay. I've never set learning objectives. Do we need to do this?

I think if you look at the planning section in One CPD, it makes it really easy to add some learning objectives and then you can then link it to your activity. And a learning objective doesn't have to be so formal. It's just thinking about what you want to do as you move forward. And it doesn't have to be a whole year in advance. It could just be a case comes in and you just want to learn a bit more about it. So it can be something that you're just doing as part of your everyday role. It doesn't have to be something you need to do for another 12 months or so.

Okay. And we've had a couple of questions asking how do I get the One CPD app?

So if you look on our website, we have the webinar about new users and I'll show, and it goes through exactly how you download the app and your username and password and everything. So Jo and Deborah, maybe you can send or share that webinar after?

We can certainly include the link to that in the follow-up email, for sure.

In a non-clinical environment there would be some information which is confidential. If it's uploaded, is that safe?

I mean, again, focus on your learning and how you're going to use it. You don't have to record all details about the case and exact details. So focus on those key details of your reflection.

Okay. And there are a couple of questions around templates for reflection or a scoring system, but I think that's probably covered off in the One CPD reflection section.

Yes, it's certainly not about scoring. So it's about what's beneficial to you. But there is the guided reflection that does guide you through how to do it. And again, I would just, if you're not sure of how to use One CPD, look at the webinars that we did because it goes through it in more detail because I did it quite quickly now.

Great, thank you. There's one more question for Jenny in this section and then we'll move on for questions for Shauna and Stephen. Currently it's easy to tell if one has complied with the RCVS CPD requirement. How will we know if our reflection passes, in inverted commas, the RCVS requirement?

So as I said, it's not going to be marked. You'll see as you use the app how many hours you have reflected on. So it'll be easy for you to see that you met the requirements both in hours and reflection. But you don't have to wait for anyone from the RCVS to go through and say yes, that's a tick box that you've done it. As long as you reflect on your CPD thinking about your learning and how you're going to use it, then that's fine. It's all about how it's beneficial to you. That is what reflection is all about.

Great, that's really helpful, thank you. So moving over to questions for Shauna now. How much detail do you go into when you reflect?

So it varies. I mean, I just try and think about the key things. What did I learn? What did I think was good about that CPD? What am I going to take with me? And really try and keep it quite succinct. Write a few sentences. I mean, I haven't actually recorded a voice recording, but the same would apply. I think a few succinct sentences on what was important to me is really all that's needed. I don't think anyone's expecting big long essays really.

Thank you. And do you reflect by yourself or with others?

So I think it really depends on the type of CPD you're doing. I think if I attend a lecture or a conference as an individual, then I would probably reflect upon that activity by myself. But if I was having a case discussion, we were doing something in practice, I was doing something with a group of colleagues, then perhaps we would all reflect upon how that activity has affected all of us as a group. And then I would probably go and record something about that afterwards.

Great, thank you. And do you reflect on every CPD activity you record?

Yes, yes I do. I don't necessarily do it straight away. And as I said, I sometimes consider a few activities together and then go back. But I do certainly try and put something for each of the activities I've undertaken.

So we've got something I think we've covered, but I think it's probably useful to revisit. Should I do reflections straight after my CPD or once I've used my CPD learning in practice?

So I guess there's a couple of answers to that. I often take a day or so to really have a think about the impact that the CPD's had on me. I think that's completely valid. If you've got something you really want to note down straight away that you think is important, then obviously you can do that straight away. I think the second part of that question is about should I reflect once I have put that learning into practice? Now actually that would be a really lovely thing to do and it's taking a step on from what did I learn at the CPD and then how did I implement that? And there's nothing to stop you going back into the app after that time and adding an additional comment or reflection at that point.

So we've had a couple of questions about reflection and how long it needs to be. So one person is saying they struggle to write at length, and then somebody else is saying sometimes they reflect as a sentence or sometimes a couple of paragraphs. Do you think the length of the reflection matters?

No, because it is something that's so personal to everybody. And whereas one person might like to write a very long commentary that's really important to them, others may just want to make a few concise comments that really demonstrate what the impact was to them individually. And I think this is the important thing, that the reflection is not a prescriptive thing. It's something that's quite fluid for the individual. And everybody's reflections will look very different. And so that's why in a way there can't be a defined format as to how you do this. It's what reflection makes it important to you, makes you understand the impact of what you did and has an effect on you moving forward. And so if that is able to be done in a couple of sentences or a short voice clip, then that is perfect. If that's something you'd rather write a much longer detail about, then again equally feel free to do so.

Great. So we've got a couple of questions for Steven now. So the first question is: what's the aim of reflecting on CPD? Is it a box ticking exercise?

I'd be disappointed if it ended a box ticking exercise because to me reflection is central to how we function as balanced professionals. And lots of people perhaps don't realize that they're doing it as they go along in their daily work, or they recognize it but they maybe don't see the value of recording it. I think jotting it down though does help you focus. It crystallizes my thinking very often. And as has already been said, that can be a few words, or if we get really involved it can be a few sentences or paragraphs. It will vary for me like it varies for Shauna and I'm sure lots of others. But crystallizing that thinking, it helps us be more organized certainly around our CPD, in terms of what's meaningful for us. Are we just attending things that we know anyway and the return on time spent is quite poor? Or are we genuinely addressing areas of need in terms of what we're doing day-to-day? And also then in terms of what we're taking from that CPD, what can we really value and build into our practice? And what maybe was a waste of time and we're not going to go there again?

So it can make us feel more confident that we're using our time well and not being just overwhelmed by the mass of opportunities, which increasingly they are for CPD. Reflection is then saying but what do I need out of this and helping confine that to our genuine needs.

Thank you. And the next question is: is there any evidence that reflecting on our CPD can help reduce anxiety doing the job as a vet professional?

So going back a number of years now, Tiny Kinnis and I, working on some of the early participants in the certificate of advanced veterinary practice, particularly around the professional skills module as it then was, were interested in the learning that had gone on. But what we were finding from a lot of those participants was, and by the way, this is really helping me understand myself and surprisingly reducing my anxiety and making me feel really good about going into work each day where I was starting to feel actually anxious and apprehensive because I was feeling overwhelmed.

So some of the participants were saying they were surprised by this. And we were slightly surprised. We shouldn't have been because we weren't looking for it. And as we've got more into reflection, both in general about our work and around practice, around CPD, we've discovered that that process of really focusing on who we are, what we can do and what we're offering, and these reasonable expectations of ourselves, really helps us then control our anxieties around uncertainty, our anxieties around that feeling of being overwhelmed in the way that if we ignore those things we don't.

So it has this, meaningfully reflecting on our practice and learning then has this indirect benefit. It's not direct reflection on the anxiety, but this benefit then in reducing these signs of the fact that we're perceiving our lives as out of control.

Great, thank you. We've got some more questions that I think Jenny will probably be best placed to answer. The first question is: do we have to plan CPD now?

Well, it's part of the outcomes based cycle of plan, do, record and reflect. But it's a dynamic process. Not everything will need to be planned. So you might want to take a bit of time just to step back and think about what you actually want to get out of your CPD. And as I said, it doesn't have to be a long-term plan. It can also be a short-term plan. It could be something comes, a case comes into your practice and you realize that you actually need just to brush up on your skills in that area.

We've had a couple of questions about the time expected to be spent on reflection. So can you please just clarify that the CPD hourly target is separate from the time spent reflecting?

Well, it may be, if you do just the short reflection, it's not going to take up much of your time. So but if you go into more in-depth reflections, then it can be part of the CPD requirement. And you can also count that reflection as part of your CPD.

Thank you very much. So the next question: if I reflect that was a waste of time, would I need to find more hours to make sure I had done my 35 hours of useful CPD?

Well, you can still record the CPD activity, but for your own benefit you might want to think about what you want to do next and what CPD works best for you so you don't waste your time doing CPD that you don't learn anything from.

I'm a newly qualified RVN. Is this reflection similar to NPL reflection? Just not sure I'm going down the right path for the CPD I've carried out.

Yes, it will be some similarity to NPL. And again, just if you're not sure of how to do it, you can use the guided reflection in One CPD and just go through these three prompts. But just try not to overthink it too much. Think about did you learn anything, what were the key things you learned, and how are you going to use it? And did it improve your knowledge, your skills, or will it change your behavior in any way? And you can just add those notes there. And again, it doesn't have to be long. It could just be a few sentences or bullet points.

Great, thank you. So we've got three more questions. Are there any examples of reflection I can refer to in the future? Jo, are there any? Do we have a few examples of reflections on our website?

Yeah, so I think there's probably two ways that we could answer this. So there are examples of how to reflect. So Jenny's demonstration of reflecting in the One CPD app, so you could revisit the recording of that section. There's also recordings of the One CPD app and how to use it on our website. And then Jenny again shows you how to reflect. We don't I believe have any examples of a vet or vet nurse reflecting on their CPD. Shauna, I'm not sure if there's anything that you could chime in with here if there's any examples that you're familiar with?

There's none that I know of online, but if you want I can read some out of my One CPD app if that helps.

That'd be great.

So like I can give you an example of one perhaps that I did a while ago where I used the guided reflective notes if that's useful. So just for a bit of context, this CPD was where I joined a multidisciplinary round. So we had a number of different people from different avenues who were all getting together to discuss some cases and do some guided clinical learning basically in a multidisciplinary way.

So initially it says: how did the CPD relate to your learning objectives and plan? So my learning objectives for this year hadn't included that. The way I set my learning objectives is basically topics that I want to do. So in that area I had simply written: this was not related to my objectives, it was a chance opportunity to undertake something new.

What are the key things you've learned? So in here I said: the multidisciplinary nature of treating cases which involve behavior and neurology was incredibly interesting. And the insight into how other clinicians undertake certain aspects of these cases has really helped me look at these from a wider aspect.

And then: what impact has this CPD undertaken had on you as a professional or in your role? I've said: it's given me a greater understanding for the challenges that my colleagues have in certain cases, but it has also led me to understand that I would like to attend more of these rounds in different disciplines to develop relationships with professionals outwith my own area.

So that was an example of something I did which was a chance CPD that was a reflection on something that I wouldn't have normally taken part in, but it was something that perhaps people could relate to because it's more of a chance encounter you're doing in practice rather than something related to maybe going to a lecture or going to a conference. Hopefully that's helpful.

I think that is really helpful. And I think building on that and your discussion of objectives, we have a question: are the objectives those of the activity or are they your own perceived objective within the CPD?

I use the objectives to think about what I want to concentrate on for that year. So for example, I might have an objective related to upskilling in leadership training. And I might have put within that objective some targets within that that I'd want to undertake. And then I might want to focus on a certain clinical area and I'll use that clinical area as an objective that I want to target CPD in that particular clinical area because I feel like I maybe either haven't seen as many cases in that area or I want to upskill in that.

So I don't write these objectives sticking to that SMART objective that we may have all learned about at university. I simply use it as a way of looking at my CPD overall and deciding on these are the key areas that I want to look at. But it's not so conscript that I can't do things outwith those areas.

Great. And we've got just a question around personal approach I suppose, and I think it would be useful to get your take. Someone's saying they think scoring is useful to them and it's useful to assess the impact or quality or learning needs. So presumably they could use that personally within One CPD as a way of capturing their thoughts about the CPD they've undertaken?

Yeah, I wonder what type of scoring they particularly mean. I mean, there's no scoring system from the RCVS for this because it is a very personal undertaking. I guess if that's something that somebody finds personally useful, then great, perfect, because that's part of the learning experience. But I think trying to attribute a number or a score or a grade to our reflections is not what this is about. It's about personal improvement and personal development more than anything.

Great. We've got one more question. I think this probably is for Jenny. We've had a question: I still don't quite understand about the required hours. Are we saying that you have to time how long it takes you to write and record the reflection and that counts towards your reflection hours?

So I think just go ahead, just do what you've been doing, count the hours of CPD. And as you can see, reflecting on your CPD doesn't have to take more than a few minutes. So you don't have to record those reflections and count them towards CPD. But if you go into more depth, so you spend time reflecting in depth on your CPD, so it might take half an hour or an hour with that just reflecting on CPD, then you can of course count it as part of your CPD. But everyday cases, your reflection won't take up that much time that you'll be able to count it towards the CPD requirement.

Great. So I think we've covered hopefully all of the questions that have come in. So thank you very much for everybody for asking those questions and hopefully they were useful in answering.

Thank you everyone. And if you do want to share how you reflect, please get in touch with us. The best email address is [email protected]. Thank you and have a nice afternoon.