Registered member Hugh Harrison shares his experience of the value of Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
However long one has been in practice, the urge to inquire, learn and develop as a practitioner never ceases, and the benefits of continuing professional development (CPD) not only serve the needs of our patients, and profession but also our own needs for greater knowledge, skills and understanding.
An Overview of CPD
The main elements of CPD should include the following:
reflective practice and supervision
acquiring new information, knowledge, experience, understanding and skills
developing new and better informed practice or different approaches in terms of patient treatment strategies
audit and evaluation
I shall deal with each of the above, briefly.
Reflective Practice & Supervision
From the very beginning of our professional lives it is essential that we develop a reflective practice which can be served by a combination of keeping a journal, dialogue, discussion and regular peer-review. By these means we acquire improved knowledge, confidence, understanding and progressive enhancement of our professional practice.
Acquiring information, knowledge, experience, understanding and skills
Life in professional practice is always a ‘learning curve’, and, in a sense, every new patient is there not only to be listened to, understood and treated to the best of our ability and skills, but also to learn from as a unique human being. Not only should we discipline ourselves to be more familiar with new provings, materia medica, and treatment strategies from our reading but also different methodologies and cultural approaches to patient treatment.
Audit, evaluation and planning
It is in all our interests as practitioners and our patients’ well being to be attuned to the important aspect of evaluating our treatments, both in terms of patient outcome measures and satisfaction, but also in terms of understanding the effectiveness of our treatment strategies and protocols. Once we have a systematic means of evaluating our patient treatment strategies and outcomes, we can also set goals for future research, learning and professional development which forms an integral part of our CPD programme.
Finally, although I have outlined some of the key elements and benefits of continuing professional development, I also want to reinforce that it is not only a personal developmental journey but also a highly collaborative one because we are primarily relational beings working together as part of a Society.
CPD guidelines and resources are available in the Practitioner hub
Material published in this section of the website does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Society of Homeopaths.
