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Continuing Professional Development
What is it?
Continual Professional Development (CPD) is defined as the holistic commitment to structured skills enhancement and personal or professional competence.
CPD can also be defined as “the conscious updating of professional knowledge and the improvement of professional competence throughout a person’s working life. It is a commitment to being professional, keeping up to date and continuously seeking to improve.” (The Chartered Institute of Professional Development, 2000).
With the rapidly increasing rate of medical knowledge and technological change, personal and organisational prioritisation of CPD and continual quality improvement is essential.
This section provides links to some useful resources for CPD and continuing medical education. If there are other high quality resources you think we should include, please let us know.
CME Resources for Primary Care Providers
Goodfellow Unit
Continuing Professional Education (CPE) – The Goodfellow Unit is linked to the Department of General Practice and Primary Healthcare, University of Auckland and has developed a range of useful resources for supporting GPs and nurses with ongoing education and professional development.
Goodfellow Club – NZ based CME for GPs, nurses and physiotherapists. Earn CME points any time, day or night, by completing a range of case studies, quizzes and topic updates. Joining is free.
BMJ Online Learning
BMJ Learning is the world’s largest independent online learning service for health professionals. Developed by the British Medical Journal Group, there are over 300 learning modules, a range of case studies and evidence-based resources. You will find something for everyone with specific sections for hospital doctors, GPs, nurses, practice managers, registrars and other allied health professionals. Well worth a look.
Register for 50+ modules (free)
Members of the RNZCGP can now gain full access to BMJ Learning. Visit RNZCGP website for details
Additional Resources
Textbooks – Free Medical Books 4 Doctors
Receive emails of the table of contents of your favourite journals – BMJ, Lancet, Family Practice etc.
Sign up for regular emails of the most relevant and useful Evidence Updates tailored to your areas of interest. This unique service is provided by BMJ Group and McMaster University’s Health Information Research Unit. ”All citations (from over 170 premier clinical journals) are pre-rated for quality by research staff, then rated for clinical relevance and interest by at least 3 members of a worldwide panel of practicing physicians.”
Self-directed Reading
Answering Clinical Questions with Literature Searches
Do you have a clinical question and wondering how to find a reliable, up to date article that answers your question?
For a brief search, one can start with PubMed. PubMed is a service of the US National Library of Medicine that includes over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals. In most cases, an abstract is available and some even link to the full article.
To assess an article properly, one then needs to apply the principles of clinical epidemiology and evidence-based medicine. To remind yourself how to evaluate the literature, review the resources located on the EPIQ website. EPIQ stands for Effective Practice, Informatics & Quality Improvement and is a NZ group that has developed some great resources used throughout the world.
- EPIQ - home page, staff and post-graduate courses
- Critical Appraisal & Evidence-based Practice
- Critical Appraisal Library
- Workshops & Courses
Journal Reviews
WONCA Journal Watch – free service
Popular Journals
Bio Med Central - Publisher of 200 peer-reviewed open access journals
Clinical Diabetes (open access)
Free Medical Journals – over 1214 journals available
Journal American Board of Family Medicine – (free access)
Nutrition Journal (open access)
Journal of Primary Healthcare - NZ
NZ Medical Journal – (open access to articles over 6 months)
Preventing Chronic Disease – journal from CDC focusing on public health research, practice and policy
Short Courses
These range from smoking cessation or nutrition training through to cognitive-behaviour therapy and brief interventions training. Too numerous to list, here are just a few key organisations to get you started:
- Flinders Programme – 2 day training in chronic disease self management and the Flinders tools for structured long-term condition management. Ideal for use with Care Plus and other LTC programmes … more…
- National Heart Foundation courses
- PHARMAC Seminar Series – interesting seminars (1 day) throughout the year
- Asthma Fundamentals - Asthma & Respiratory NZ
- Your local DHB or PHO
Postgraduate Study
Have you ever thought about completing a short course, special interest paper, post-graduate certificate or diploma?
The options are extensive with most universities, unitecs and nursing schools offering various courses. Here are just a few with a focus on prevention or long-term conditions to give you some ideas.
- University of Auckland – General Practice and Primary Healthcare
- University of Otago – Wellington School of Medicine – post-graduate courses
- Unitec NZ
- AUT – Auckland University of Technology postgraduate health diplomas
- Massey University – 3 campuses: Auckland, Palmerston North and Wellington
- University of Auckland – Postgraduate Diplomas in Clinical Education
Professional Requirements
Nursing Council of NZ – Continuing Competence Framework
RNZCGP – College Educational Programmes including AVE and MOPS
Cornerstone - ”is a combined quality improvement and quality assurance process which uses a set of measurements collated in the publication Aiming for Excellence.”
