Board announces new accredited CPD home

20 Jan 2023

Progress to strengthen Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for doctors continues, with the Medical Board of Australia approving a new CPD home, on advice from the Australian Medical Council (AMC).

Doctorportal Learning – owned and run by the Australian Medical Association (AMA WA) – is now an accredited CPD home and will provide quality-assured CPD to doctors, to support safe practice. It will provide CPD programs for all doctors, Australia-wide. It joins all AMC-accredited specialist medical colleges as a CPD home. 

From January 2023, all doctors doing CPD programs with a CPD home – either a specialist college or Doctorportal Learning - will be able to meet the Board’s CPD requirements. During 2023, specialist colleges will report to the AMC about how they have adapted their CPD programs to meet all CPD home requirements.

During 2023, doctors who do not have a CPD home can keep doing the same type of CPD that they are currently doing, while keeping an eye out for new, accredited CPD homes to emerge that offer CPD programs relevant to their scope of practice. 

All doctors in Australia will need a CPD home by 2024, when additional CPD homes will be established.

There will be two CPD home accreditation application rounds run by the AMC, in April and August 2023. 

The AMC expects other new aspiring CPD homes will apply for accreditation in 2023, along with some of the organisations not successful in the 2022 round of CPD home accreditation. 

Introducing accredited CPD homes is an important feature of strengthened CPD.

In its comprehensive accreditation report to the Board, the AMC advised that Doctorportal Learning has the necessary technical, educational and organisational expertise. Doctorportal Learning has been providing a comprehensive CPD tracking service since 2015.

Medical Board of Australia Chair, Dr Anne Tonkin, said the Board was pleased to take the AMC’s advice that after a rigorous accreditation assessment, the new CPD home would provide quality CPD to doctors, relevant to their scope of practice.

‘We want to make sure doctors get the most value from the time they invest in CPD,’ Dr Tonkin said.

‘Quality assurance is the whole reason we’re requiring CPD homes to be AMC accredited – so doctors have access to CPD homes with the educational, organisational and technical expertise needed to provide them with a high quality CPD home service,’ she said.

The Board has redesigned CPD to support quality, lifelong learning for doctors that is relevant, effective and evidence-based. The three core elements are CPD homes, professional development plans and different types of CPD for all doctors.

CPD homes are quality-assured, support safe practice and:

• provide CPD programs that are robust, monitored and evaluated
• support doctors to tailor CPD to their learning needs
• are accredited by the AMC
• coordinate CPD programs, ensure quality activities and help doctors keep track of their CPD hours with a system for CPD record-keeping 
• make sure doctors meet CPD requirements, including for:
  • culturally safe practice
  • addressing health inequities
  • professionalism and 
  • ethical practice.

Visit the Board’s CPD hub for more detail

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