Setting standards in professional development

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Patient and public safety lies at the heart of Australia’s health system. Maintaining standards and ensuring we have a safe, qualified and patient-centred health workforce is a vital focus for the regulatory work of the national health practitioner boards and the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), writes Martin Fletcher.

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National Boards expect registered health practitioners to maintain, develop and update their knowledge, expertise, skills and performance throughout their professional lives.
One of the important ways they do this is by setting standards for Continuing Professional Development (CPD). CPD is one of the five core registration standards set by the National Boards that all registered health practitioners must meet1. The other four core standards are: English language skills, professional indemnity insurance, criminal history and recency of practice.
These standards, together with each Board’s code of conduct and other guidelines and policies, are the main ways the National Boards define the national standards they expect of practitioners, regardless of where they practise in Australia.
The standards bring consistency across geographic borders; make the Boards’ expectations clear to the professions and the community; and inform regulatory decision-making when concerns are raised about practitioners’ conduct, health or performance. National Boards hold practitioners to account against these standards in disciplinary processes.
Professional development is mandatory
CPD is an important part of helping make sure registered health practitioners provide safe and effective health services. CPD includes a range of activities to meet individual learning needs. CPD typically requires health practitioners to identify learning objectives, plan and participate in relevant and appropriate profession-oriented learning activities and reflect on the value of those activities.
National Boards have set the minimum requirements for each profession that must be completed each year. This can be in points or hours of CPD. CPD activities must be documented and practitioners must make a declaration that they have met the standard when they apply to renew their registration each year. These declarations are subject to audit.
Information recorded should show goals and outcomes of the CPD, details of the activity and the contribution of the activity to the practitioner’s goal to enhancing their competence in their profession. CPD activities can be self-directed and/or facilitated by a professional organisation, depending on a National Board’s requirements.
Some professional organisations offer their CPD activities in terms of points and practitioners often ask how to equate this to hours of completed CPD. Practitioners should speak to their professional organisation to confirm the hours-equivalent of CPD from the points they have completed.
Sometimes practitioners choose not to work in their profession for a variety of reasons but still wish to remain registered. The reasons may be maternity leave, extended overseas travel, moving overseas, or for an extended career break. If someone is registered, they need to continue to undertake CPD relevant to their usual practice.
Practice means any role, whether remunerated or not, in which the individual uses their skills and knowledge as a health practitioner in their profession. Practice is not restricted to the provision of direct clinical care. It also includes using professional knowledge in a direct non-clinical relationship with clients, working in management, administration, education, research, advisory, regulatory or policy development roles, and any other roles that impact on safe, effective delivery of services in the profession.
Practitioners taking time out from their work might consider opting for non-practising registration, which does not require CPD. Practitioners changing back from non-practising to a form of registration that allows them to practise would need to meet the relevant registration standards, along with other requirements.

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“CPD is one of the five core registration standards set by the National Boards that all registered health practitioners must  meet ². The other four core standards are: English language skills, professional indemnity insurance, criminal history  and recency of practice.”

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Checking health practitioner compliance
Health practitioners must renew their registration annually. Each time they renew, they must make declarations that they comply with the registration standards that have been developed by the National Board that registers them.
AHPRA has worked with National Boards to develop and implement an auditing framework to assure compliance with the registration standards through an audit process. Audits are an important way to protect the public and are now routine business in the National Scheme. All professions have completed or are about to complete their first audit cycle. The registration standards that may be audited are:

• Continuing Professional Development (CPD)


• recency of practice


• professional indemnity insurance arrangements, and


• criminal history.

A practitioner can be audited at any time and will receive an audit notice from AHPRA. It includes a checklist that outlines what supporting documentation is required to demonstrate that a practitioner meets the standard(s) being audited.
Information about what evidence practitioners need to provide to show that they meet the registration standards being audited is published on the AHPRA website under registration/audit. If a practitioner declared that they met the National Board’s standards, and an audit showed that they did not, then disciplinary action by a National Board is possible.
Audits help to make sure that practitioners are meeting the minimum national standards and provide important assurance to the community and the National Boards. Further information, including guidance on how long practitioners should keep their CPD logs and templates for recording CPD activities, is published on Board websites.
Accreditation and training
One of the objectives of the National Law is to facilitate the provision of high quality education and training of health practitioners. The accreditation function is the primary way of achieving this.
There are separate accreditation authorities for each health profession in the National Scheme. The National Board for each profession decides on the accreditation authority for the relevant profession: 11 have appointed external authorities and three have established committees. The National Boards and AHPRA work with these authorities to make sure the education and training in the health professions in the National Scheme is robust.
Australia’s registered health workforce has grown each year since the National Scheme started in July 2010. There were more than 619,500 health practitioners from 14 professions registered in Australia on 30 June 2014.
In 2010 the National Scheme regulated chiropractors, dental practitioners, medical practitioners, nurses and midwives, optometrists, osteopaths, pharmacists, physiotherapists, podiatrists and psychologists. Four more health professions joined the scheme in July 2012: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioners, Chinese medicine practitioners, medical radiation practitioners and occupational therapists.
The National Scheme aims to protect the public by ensuring that only suitably trained and qualified practitioners are registered. It also facilitates: workforce mobility across Australia; the provision of high-quality education and training of health practitioners; and rigorous assessment of overseas-trained practitioners.
The scheme provides a clear and consistently applied framework that has strengthened the requirements for regulating health practitioners in Australia. The public can be confident that graduates of Board-approved programs of study meet the national standards required for registration in Australia and that registered practitioners are engaging regularly in training and professional development.

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“AHPRA has worked  with National Boards  to develop and implement an auditing framework to assure compliance with the registration standards through an audit process”

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Martin Fletcher
Before joining AHPRA, Martin was chief executive of the National Patient Safety Agency, the leading National Health Service body for patient safety in England and Wales.
AHPRA is the national organisation responsible for implementing the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme across Australia, in partnership with 14 national health practitioner boards.
Guided by a nationally consistent law, AHPRA and the National Boards work to regulate the health professions in the public interest. This includes registering practitioners who are suitably trained and qualified to provide safe healthcare, and investigating concerns about registered health practitioners.

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1. Registration standards are mandatory under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law, as in force in each state and territory (the National Law).