Lifelong learning
Keeping up to date with best practice is part of the professional life of a team or an individual. Most people combine reading journal articles, attending case reviews and conferences, and discussions with colleagues to know about current best practice.
Continuing Professional Development, CPD, is an essential part of good practice, but also a state of mind. The good thing about CPD is that it is enjoyable and rewarding to learn new things and put them into practice. Whether digesting academic papers or refreshing some basics, practitioners should be adding to their knowledge every single week. From time to time take on something major - perhaps with support from a training course or tutorials.
Supervision of is an essential of good practice for all levels of staff. Supervision may be individual, in which case it is important that a supervisor is competent and trusted, or as a peer group. Therapy sessions need to be recorded for supervision and process assessments.
Use the Working Alliance Inventory and the Brief Process Rating Scale for therapist effectiveness appraisals.
Aspects of Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
Make sure to set aside regular time for CPD. It can be more fun and more productive to do it with colleagues...
✔︎ Video recording of treatment sessions is the gold standard for evaluating individual practice. Much can be learned simply by watching yourself in session. Better to have objective views in a peer group or with a competent and trusted supervisor.
✔︎ Audit is a valuable tool. Projects may be at a national level, for example monitoring deaths, or at a local level, for example checking on the quality of a procedure such as urine screening or detoxification.
✔︎ Journal articles are the way to keep up with the latest scientific evidence in the field. May work best as a journal club or access a website.
✔︎ Guidelines are a helpful benchmark of good practice. They are not a rule book, they get out of date quickly and need to be interpreted for local use.
Learning modules
The CPD modules involve a substantial amount of study and participants will need to set aside sufficient time fully to digest and reflect on their work. Eight weeks is a good average.
You will need to download the module workbook to guide you through the topics and tasks. This is where you will record your own thoughts and observations and you will keep the workbook for your CPD portfolio. Click or tap the image to preview the workbook.
Talking to People
Psycho-pharmacology
Psycho-social interventions
New modules on Mental Health & Addiction and Measuring Treatment Outcomes will be available in the future
About the modules
Each workbook will take you on your learning journey: you will visit a number of website pages and also find some material designed to be controversial or thought provoking, which is not in the website.
Each module is made up of a number of topics. Each topic has 3-4 tasks. One of the tasks will be to view webpages, where you will watch videos, read scientific articles, and take in checklists, for example. Another task is the Debating Box, which will present a controversial or thought provoking idea, which will be complemented by a research paper or report. The final task for each topic will be a discussion of the learning points - ideally you will convene or join a Study Group (this could be a peer group, just one colleague, or a trusted supervisor) for your topic discussions. Arrange your meeting times at the start of each topic and use these as the deadline for completion. The aim of the Study Group is to sharpen up your thoughts on each topic.
Be sure to record your reflections on what you have learned in your workbook as you go along. The workbook is a valuable record of your CPD learning.
