The FOM CPD scheme

The Faculty encourages all those working within occupational medicine to participate in its CPD scheme. Many consumer groups and many medical bodies - including the Department of Health, the General Medical Council, and the Academy of Royal Medical Colleges, regard CPD as a professional obligation. The Faculty is also committed to the concept of CPD as a means of encouraging and upholding the highest professional standards of knowledge and performance among doctors who practise occupational medicine.

Why should I take part?

Participation is in your own interests for three reasons:

Shortly you will have to demonstrate currency of professional development to third parties (appraisers and members of revalidation groups) in order to retain medical registration with the General Medical Council.
Employers are increasingly seeking evidence under systems of clinical governance that their doctors are keeping up to date. A CPD record represents one form of evidence that Faculty members can present for this purpose.
In addition, participation offers you the opportunity to learn new skills, to reflect on and to improve your practice, and to enrich your professional life.

Charges

Participation in the scheme is a benefit of membership for Fellows, Members and Associates and for those who affiliate to the Faculty.

The annual deadline for CPD returns is 31 March. Submissions received after this date will incur a £55 charge.

There is an annual charge (currently £500.00) for non-members who wish to participate in the scheme.

Electronic CPD Diary

The Faculty CPD scheme has been updated to make it fit for revalidation by ensuring it conforms to an Academy of Medical Royal Colleges framework for CPD that has been approved by the GMC. The overall requirement for 50 CPD credits (250 in a five year cycle) is unchanged but there is added flexibility in how credits can be accumulated, for example by the addition of a new category of personal CPD.

The Faculty is developing an electronic CPD diary that will allow members to record their CPD on-line, which will make recording, summarising and recording reflection more straight forward and remove the requirement to submit an annual paper summary. It should be available later in 2010. The current paper version will run in parallel until December 2012 when it will cease.

The revised CPD guidance, including elements such as personal CPD will only apply to users of the electronic version.

Effectiveness of Continuing Professional Development

The College of Emergency Medicine, Federation of Royal Colleges of Physicians and Manchester Metropolitan University have written a report on the Effectiveness of Continuing Professional Development. The report is based on research carried out for a GMC study, as it has been recognised that there has been little literature written on the effectiveness of CPD.

The study involved non-training doctors from staff grades to senior consultants, including those primarily involved in management, CPD provision and assessment; and institutional officials, such as in Deaneries and universities, across a range of specialties to determine their understanding of:

their own learning, or the learning of other doctors within their organisations
how this learning relates to conceptions of CPD, its provision and its uptake
effective CPD.

Full report

Further information

Subscribing members of the Faculty may access instructions for recording CPD and the relevant forms via the library - search for document type CPD.