Continuing professional development
Continuing professional development
Feature
Your new RCOT CPD portfolio is here
This month we welcome the launch of RCOT ’ s new CPD portfolio , a web and app-based tool that supports you to record your CPD activities , reflections and evidence in one place . Emma Grover explains how it works .
T he moment you ’ ve all been waiting for is finally here . RCOT membership now includes free access to your very own CPD portfolio . We ’ ve teamed up with CPDme to give members access to an online platform and app designed to make CPD recording easy and accessible .
We know just how challenging it can be to keep track of your CPD activities and the anxiety that falling behind in recording CPD creates , especially as we approach Health and Care Professions Council ( HCPC ) CPD re-registration periods and the possibility of being called for CPD audit looms .
Which is why Emma Grover , RCOT Professional Development Lead , is on a mission to transform the way we approach CPD .
What is it ?
The tool , provided by CPDme , is designed to help us fit CPD into our busy working lives and help us to meet the HCPC CPD standards to continually improve the quality of our work and benefit the people we work with .
Andrew Ormerod , founder and Innovations Director of CPDme , first designed this tool after carrying out research to help him find the most effective way of recording his own CPD for HCPC audit in his role as a paramedic .
Andrew says : ‘ We are honoured to work with such an esteemed organisation supporting occupational therapists and students around the world . Making recording CPD simple is our key mission here at CPDme and together with RCOT we aim to innovate and support the ability for members to easily record , reflect and maintain an accurate record of their personal development .’
How did we get here ?
Over the past few months , we ’ ve been working hard behind the scenes to explore potential solutions to support you in maintaining up-todate records of your continuous professional development .
We worked alongside an external partner , who helped us to evaluate different products on the market , to make sure we could find exactly what we ’ re looking for and best serve our members ’ needs .
As Emma tells us : ‘ The intuitive features of the CPDme portfolio stood out from the get-go . But , to make sure we could be confident in providing the best possible tool for our members , it was really important for us to test this out and see how our community interacted with the platform over time .
‘ We invited over 400 of our volunteers , who provide a range of CPD activities through our regional groups and Specialist Sections , to take part in a pilot . We then worked with 77 members , between June and September , who were really engaged with the platform and gave us some great feedback and some really useful recommendations for improvements .’
So , what do our members think ? We found : an 85 % satisfaction level ; 92 % said they would recommend it to a colleague ; more than 80 % found it easy to use ( from first use ); 81 % said it is time saving ; 85 % said it helped them to stay organised ; and everyone indicated they wanted to use the tool again .
Megan Evans , a member who participated in the pilot said : The CPD app has made a huge difference to the way I manage my continuing professional development activities . Being able to access it anywhere , at any time , means I am able to capture quality CPD activities easily and helps to alleviate that well-known , dreaded audit feeling .’
12 OTnews December 2023