Continuing Professional Development and Revalidation: An Analysis of General Practitioners’ Recorded Learning

Revalidation will be introduced in 2010; it will require general practitioners (GPs) to demonstrate they are fit to practise according to standards set by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). This will include the requirement to achieve 50 continuing professional development (CPD) credits per year. There has been no published analysis of GPs' current CPD. This paper describes a retrospective analysis of the learning logs kept by 71 practising GPs undertaking the interim Membership by Assessment of Performance (iMAP) programme, considering quantity of recorded learning, evidence of reflection on outcome and spread of content across the domains of the General Medical Council's Good Medical Practice (GMP). The average GP iMAP candidate undertook 87 hours of CPD over the year (range 21.5 hours to 293.5 hours); 16 (22.5%) undertook less than 50 hours while 22 recorded more than 100 hours. The GPs averaged five different types of CPD and 31 recorded outcomes across the year. Most GPs recorded outcomes in each domain of GMP. Those who logged more activities were also those more likely to record a wider spread of learning across the RCGP's curriculum. These results suggest that the RCGP's proposed managed CPD scheme is feasible based on the current CPD activity of this self-selected group.