press release
Launch of CPD Forum
'Let's Get Talking'
"3 million people in the UK have doctors who are not fit to practise... this is due to a variety of reasons, including losing their skills, failing to keep up to date, incompetence and ill health... The quality of care can affect the outcome and possible consequences of illness, and at times mean the difference between life and death." (Sir Donald Irvine Former GMC President. Quotes from the Guardian 18/12/04 Sarah Boseley 'Doctors failing 3m patients')
The health sector has been under scrutiny for a while concerning competence and personal liability which, has filtered into other areas of high risk jobs such as lawyers, engineers, law and enforcement. Overall there is a growing concern over professional competence and Continuing Professional Development (CPD). The healthcare sector is leading by example, as the Health Professions Council (HPC) has recently announced that CPD compliance is now mandatory and a 2-year retrospective audit will commence in 2008.
In response to this changing environment a new CPD Forum was launched on Wednesday 6th July 2005 to address and consolidate the issues surrounding CPD. Registration and attendance to the forum is FREE. It has been created by various learning & development professionals and is sponsored by Premier IT - the 'learning solutions' company. Premier support the Forum by making their premises in central London available to host 4 events per year and have built an online website environment to help develop a CPD community (please visit www.onlinecpd.co.uk).
Peter Bodley-Scott, Director of Development, argues that "the greater emphasis on Continuing Professional Development has given rise to an increased need for professional bodies to demonstrate compliance to new guidelines and regulations. We are finding that more and more professions are recognising the importance of being pro-active in providing and assessing CPD in all its aspects".
The response from various industry sectors - ranging from engineering to medical organisations and professionals - is that the benefit of creating a portal of information and an opportunity to interact and exchange ideas with other peers is a valuable and powerful arena to consolidate ideas and solutions for CPD.
Steve Harrolow from the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists attended the forum. "I thought the cross section of industry attendance was impressive, but the key difference was the emphasis on interaction whereby members can bring issues and information to the forefront via the website and create the environment most suited to our needs".
Graham Guest, Learning & Development Consultant to the Institute of Continuing Professional Development, remarked that "Professional bodies have a professional and ethical obligation to ensure that their members remain up to date and keep abreast of standards of best practice". Graham also believes that it is vital for professionals to be able to provide evidence that they continue to maintain their professional competence through systematic improvement and broadening of knowledge and skills. A way of achieving this is through a commitment to Continuing Professional Development.
One way for Professional bodies to meet the requirements of CPD and add real value to their members is by making the process easy and accessible. One application that accommodates this is an online CPD solution, developed by Premier IT. This makes interaction and compliance an easy automated process using web-based technology. It takes into consideration the busy nature of working professionals and organisations' ability to administer CPD programmes. The Premier solution represents a radical move away from re-active paper-based systems, which are time-consuming and costly to administer, to a proactive online system where participants can plan and record their CPD using a diary. Organisations can administer information, guidance and auditing at the click of a button.
Some medical organisations have been pro-active and implemented the online CPD system such as the British Paramedic Association (BPA). Roland Furber, CEO of the BPA, explains 'We realised a robust CPD system was needed to comply with the Health Professional Council (HPC) guidelines. The Premier online CPD system has transformed communication and the professional standing of our members - not only exceeding the HPC requirements but offering our members significant added value."
The need to continually learn and develop new skills is becoming paramount for employees in the current socio-economic environment. As argued by Andrew Holmes, writer on lifelong learning issues, "In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."
Learning used to be predominantly on the job and directed by the company not the individual. However, it is now clear that the nature of work has changed irrevocably and that the 'job for life' is all but disappearing. The business and economic environment has changed to one of uncertainty and unpredictability, where the emphasis on learning has shifted to the individual to ensure the most up to date skills through a variety of activities as supposed to the formal training received in the past.
The ability for people to further their knowledge and skills through a programme tailored to their specific needs, accessible anywhere via web-based technology, is a significant factor to the success of learning and professional standards being met. A forum that focuses on the need for Continuing Professional Development and the solutions relevant to today's working professionals can only bring these issues to the forefront and hopefully be instrumental in guiding change.
For further information on the CPD Forum please visit www.onlinecpd.co.uk and register to login.
