Continuing professional development (CPD) is the means by which people maintain their knowledge and skills related to their professional lives.
Please see the relevant section that applies to your grade.
Nursing and Midwifery Council
The Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC) state that to maintain your registration with the NMC, you need to declare you have completed:
- Appropriate number of hours registered practice in the previous 3 years
and
- 35 hours of learning activity (Continuing Professional Development (CPD)) in the previous 3 years
Renewing your registration for: | Practicehours required |
Nursing |
450 |
Midwifery |
450 |
Nursing and midwifery |
900 |
Nursing and specialist community public health nursing |
450 |
Midwifery and specialist community public health nursing |
900 |
Nursing, midwifery and specialist community public health nursing |
900 |
You can meet the Prep (practice) standard whether you are:
In paid work – for example:
- Employed by an organisation such as an NHS trust
- A care home
- An independent healthcare provider
- A nursing agency
- A health authority or health board
- Educational institution
- Another type of company or organisation
- If you work in independent practice
In unpaid work – for example:
- Working on a voluntary basis in a role requiring registration – such as an established healthcare charity
Not working – for example:
- When you are taking a career break within the three year re-registration period
You may still be able to meet the practice standard if you have completed the required hours in practice as a registered nurse at some point during those three years. If you do not meet the prep (practice) standard, you will need to successfully complete an approved return to practice course before you can renew your registration.
The practice standard can be met through administrative, supervisory, teaching, research, and managerial roles as well as providing direct patient care.
Any practice hours completed while you were lapsed or not registered cannot be counted towards the practice requirement.
You can meet the Prep (continuing professional development) standard by:
- Undertake learning activities relevant to your practice (there is no such thing as approved Prep (CPD) learning activity)
- Document your relevant learning activity by maintaining a personal professional profile of your learning activity stating the way in which it has informed and influenced your practice (there is no approved format, however, the NMC have developed a template which you might like to consider)
NMC Prep (CPD) – guidance for recording your learning
Your suggested record covers:
- A list and a description of your work place or organisation and role for the last three years.
You should record your work place(s) and your work or role(s) that relate to the learning activity you describe. If you have worked in various places, but in essentially the same role (for example, if you are a bank nurse or an agency nurse), you may want to group this type of work together and summarise it in this section. If you were not working, we suggest you put ‘not working’.
- The nature of the learning activity – what did you do?
You should record the learning activity related to the work you identified for the last three years. You should state the date or period when this learning activity took place and state how many hours the learning activity took.
- Description of the learning activity – what did it consist of?
Provide a detailed description of what the learning activity consisted of, why you decided to do the learning or how the opportunity came about, where when and how you did the learning and what you expected to gain from it.
- Outcome of the learning activity – how did the learning relate to your work?
You should record the effect it has had on the way in which you work or intend to work in the future and any follow-up learning which you may be planning in the future.
Some teaching organisations also provide templates with certificates of attendance for documenting individual learning activities after their events. We have provided an example template for you to print and use after any learning activity.