1. Review
This is a self-directed review that allows you to gain perspective and ask yourself the fundamental question – where am I and where do I want to get to? Where appropriate, you may wish to discuss this with a manager, supervisor or colleagues or, if in private practice, a peer learning group. Feedback from others, including service users, can provide insight and enhance understanding of your learning needs.
A review of key documents can also help you reflect on what your learning needs are. These may include:

The Medical Scientists Registration Board Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics
Job description
Competency frameworks
Performance management review documents/Personal development plans
Service/Business plans
Departmental plans and reviews/Service reviews or inspection reports
Strategic plans
Health service strategy and planning documents
Relevant national strategies and research reports

2. Plan
It’s then a case of identifying how you can get there, and creating milestones or check points in order to review progress. This stage will ensure you have a guide to follow. It’s important to remember that not all learning will be planned. Focus on the outcomes you would like to see realised, rather than a detailed plan of every activity you plan to undertake. It’s likely that your plan will include a mixture of keeping up to date with your area of expertise, learning about new areas and developing new skills. You may also be considering a change in role or organisation. Whatever your plan involves, it should recognise the range of learning opportunities that are available to you. It can be helpful to keep a record of your learning goals on a Personal Learning Plan each year. It would be helpful for your Personal Learning Plan to align with your renewal date for registration, as this will be the audit period of the Medical Scientists Registration Board.

3. Implement
Now is the time to prioritise your learning needs and implement your plan. Remember, it is a guide to aid you to structure your learning. Plans can change and it is important to review regularly to check if the learning needs you listed are still relevant. Don’t underestimate the learning you do every day. Whether you’ve been working on projects, undertaking research as part of your role or recently started a secondment, make sure you make the most of day-to-day learning.

4. Evaluate and Reflect
CORU’s CPD approach is focused on outcomes. That means that we’re primarily concerned with the outcome of your learning, or in other words how you’ve applied your learning in the work you do. This stage includes reflecting how you integrate new learning into your practice, including
reflection on each learning activity, the learning you achieved and how you implemented this learning in your practice. You’ll also find that there will be aspects of your learning that aren’t quite ready to be put into action or applied to your work. It’s important to note that learning happens incrementally and so there will be things that will likely need to be revisited in your next iteration of the CPD cycle. Reflecting on how you have integrated learning into your work is a critical stage of the learning cycle.

Reflective Practice
Reflective practice is growing in use as a method for professional development. Why? Because it enhances critical thinking, deepens self-wareness and improves communication skills. As you develop the habit of reflective practice, you can consciously and intentionally translate your insights into practice and transfer your learning into the work place. Remember, reflective practice takes practise. Health and social care professionals’ workplaces and working lives are busy. Without realising it we have a multitude of learning experiences every moment of every day. Reflective practice can make sense of these experiences and transform them into insights and practical strategies for professional development and organisational impact. For this reason the potential of reflective practice is significant.
It is typically learned through conversation, writing or reflection on complex cases/examples from practice. Both individuals, groups and teams can engage in reflective practice. The process involves deconstructing experience in order to externalise our thoughts, be honest with our feelings, analyse our patterns of behaviour, become aware of our values, question our assumptions and challenge our perceptions.
Reflection can be on either positive or negative experiences or complex cases. For example, it could be that after attending a course where you learned new skills, you were unable to implement these into your practice. It is important to explore the barriers to implementation within your practice and identify how these could be overcome and if they need to be. It can also be about personal experiences in your own life that influence how you think about a particular problem or issue. For example, reading a biography whose author discusses mental health, may provide you with insight or challenge your assumptions about service users’ needs or experiences. This in turn may influence your own work practice.

Models of Reflective Practice
The following are provided as examples of reflective practice models and can be found here (page 9)

CPD is more than simply the acquisition of knowledge and skill. CPD is not the same as Continuing Education (CE). CPD represents a flexible approach to learning which recognises a wide variety of learning opportunities from formal learning to on-the-job learning.
As CORU state: CPD is an ongoing process that occurs when undertaking any activity relevant to the role of the professional that provides new insight and learning by the professional. For ideas on what you can use for CPD activities (structured & unstructured learning activities), click here

So, how do you award your own credits:
1 CDP credit = 1 hour of new or enhanced learning and your approach should focus on the outcome of your new learning. You must be able to demonstrate the additional new skills and knowledge gained from your chosen CPD activity and its impact on your professional practice. There is a direct relationship time spent on your CPD activity and the number of credits allocated to your chosen CPD activity. Be mindful that the larger number of credits assigned would indicate a greater acquisition of new skills and knowledge acquired . This must be demonstrated  in the depth of the evaluation and reflection done on this CPD activity .

Now you need to reflect on how you integrate new learning into your practice, including reflection on each learning activity, the learning you achieved and how you implemented this learning in your practice/work.

CPD Credits
The Medical Scientists Registration Board recommends you demonstrate a minimum number of 30 CPD credits in a 12-month period. This will demonstrate that you are engaged in ongoing continuing professional development. Generally, one hour of CPD learning activity is equal to one CPD credit where the learning is new or enhanced.
CPD credits are self-determined, meaning that you decide how many credits to apply to new or enhanced learning you achieved and how this has impacted your practice.

If you are selected for CORU CPD audit , CORU require  you to complete the CORU CPD Audit template. It is important that you choose which CPD activities you wish to include to demonstrate your fulfilment of 30 CPD credits. CORU only wants to see 30 CPD credits so each registrant must select which CPD activities they wish to include in their CPD Audit record template.
CPD credits are self-determined, meaning that you decide how many credits to apply to new or enhanced learning you achieved and how this has impacted your practice. Some examples of credit allocation depending on new or enhanced learning achieved may include:
Reference: Support for CPD – Medical Scientists Registration Board. Click here

Consider the difference in two colleagues attending mandatory health and safety training. For a more senior colleague they may have undertaken this training on a number of occasions and there is little new learning. For the other, it may be a new role and so all the learning gained is new or enhanced learning. Simply completing the same activity a number of times would not accrue additional CPD credits, as the content would not be new to you. However, the same type of learning activity, such as a journal club, may contribute to CPD credit accrual as new content is likely to be generated at each meeting. Another example may be in your role as a placement supervisor. You already had a plan prepared from past experiences for supervising a new student for 3 weeks (37 hours per week). However, you find that this student challenged you on a number of occasions and you determine that it amounts to five hours of new learning. The greater the number of credits assigned, the more detail should be provided on what new learning was achieved and how this influenced your practice.

REFERENCES:
What is CORU?  click here
CPD for Medical Scientists  Click Here

Some questions you may want to ask yourself are:
What have I learnt?
Did I achieve my learning outcomes?
What kind of unplanned outcomes or challenges arose from this experience?
Which barriers or blocks did I have to overcome? How have I applied this learning at work? What was the impact of this learning for service users and/or quality service provision? What lessons can I take from this experience?
What was the impact of this learning on my professional practice?

Record keeping will be very important especially from next March onwards. The Academy CPD area on the website is the perfect repository not just for your CPD but for all your documents (important documents, CV, certificates, exam parchments etc). You can scan any document and hold it on file in your CPD on the website. You can also produce your own report from all your data which saves a lot of bother if you maintain a paper-based system.

Resources and Information:

CORU Newsletters: Click here for access

Also:

• Review the 2 articles (1 on registration and 1 on CPD) in Converse Vol. 46, Issue 1, Spring 2020. (Downloadable from the academy website)
• Review CPD of the month for July/August 2019 (about CORU’s new CPD approach)
• Review the CPD video produced by the CPD Officers HSCP Professional Development Network on how to use reflective learning in the workplace and the various models you can use. Scroll down for the video.

CORU Audit

CPD Audit Period (click here for CORU CPD Audit)

For a complete review of the CORU audit for medical scientists including a 7 minute CORU video explaining the process, click here. 

Leo Mulvany & Jemma Kehoe
Remember, your CPD officers are also a resource for you.

Email address: cpd@acslm.ie

HSCP-PDN Reflective Learning Video Resource

This HSCP CPD video is brought to you by the Health & Social Care Professions – Professional Development Network. The network is made up of CPD officers from various professions including the ACSLM CPD officers: Leo Mulvany & Jemma Kehoe.
The video introduces Reflective Learning (RL), how to learn by reflection, the models involved and short video clips from HSCP’s demonstrating how they use reflective learning on a routine basis.
Academy involvement: introduction by Jemma Kehoe, video editing/production by Leo Mulvany.

The video playbar has a few useful functions.