CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The end of the 2019-2021 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) cycle for members with odd numbered Certificates of Registration is approximately six months away. This would be a reasonable time for those members to review their progress towards acquiring the required CPD credits. Those with even numbered Certificates are now approximately one quarter of the way through the 2020-2022 cycle.
Members who are authorized to practice, must ensure that they are keeping up with developments in their areas of practice and that their knowledge and skills are up to date. While College members are encouraged not to risk their health and the health of others by having any unnecessary in-person contact, they should take advantage of any continuing professional development activities that can be undertaken safely.
It is impossible to anticipate how long the COVID-19 pandemic will last. As spring approaches, the Quality Assurance Committee will consider if any changes to the usual quality assurance declarations will be necessary. Members who were unable to meet all of the requirements at the end of the last CPD cycle were not penalized if they demonstrated that, despite best efforts and for reasons related to the pandemic, they were short on CPD credits. Fortunately, most members were able to meet or exceed the requirements, despite the restrictions imposed by the pandemic.
CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT (CPD) AUDITS
The Committee will be auditing the CPD records of 50 members. This number includes those who did not submit their Declaration of Completion for the 2018-2020 cycle as required, and those randomly selected These audits are ongoing and, while the results of some audits are not yet available, in most cases the CPD requirements have been met or exceeded.
Detailed results of the 2019 audit were provided in the January 2020 e-Bulletin to assist members in planning, carrying out and recording their CPD activities. As new and helpful information from the current audit becomes available, we will continue to provide updates.
The following is a summary of the recommendations made to members through the CPD audit process since the inception of the program:
- Monitor the maximum number of credits allowable in each category; the CPD program was designed on the principle that people learn best when learning occurs through a variety of modalities;
- Complete the required credits within the two-year cycle; one cannot “catch up” once the end of a cycle has passed;
- Indicate which activities satisfy the ethics and jurisprudence requirements and, when there is no apparent relationship between the name of the event reported and how it relates to ethics or jurisprudence, provide some explanation;
- Maintain records of the activities for which CPD credits are claimed. The College is flexible with respect to what information may be provided when a formal verification certification is not available. It is expected, however, that when less formal documents are available that would assist the QA Committee in verifying a member’s activities, they must be provided. When reporting informal activities, it is important to provide details such as:
- Names and dates of events;
- Names of presenters and sponsoring organizations;
- Names of people involved in consultations, organizations and agencies within which consultations occurred and a brief description of nature of the consultations;
- Names of authors, articles, journals, and books for which credit for either reading or writing is being claimed;
- Copies of documents announcing internal workplace events attended either as a presenter or audience member;
- Copies of any correspondence relevant to agreements to present; and
- Copies of emails confirming attendance at events
The Committee wishes to remind members that compliance with all aspects of the Quality Assurance Program is required of all members of the College, other than those with a Retired Certificate of Registration. That is, members with a Certificate of Registration for Autonomous Practice, Supervised Practice, Interim Autonomous Practice, as well as Academic and Inactive members, are required to fulfill the College’s Quality Assurance requirements. Members who are considering retirement must fulfill all requirements of the Quality Assurance Program, even if they intend to seek a Retired Certificate of Registration soon.
PEER ASSISTED REVIEWS (PAR)
Physical distancing measures necessary to decrease the spread of COVID-19 have led to the postponement of in-person PARs. Members selected this year are being asked whether they would be willing to participate in a PAR via technology or wish to defer the review until it can be conducted safely in-person. Five PARs have been conducted via secure technology since the beginning of the pandemic and these reviews appear to have been conducted successfully.
In three of the PARs conducted, the members were seen to have clearly met the standards in all nine domains of the PAR. In the other two cases, the members were provided with remedial messages concerning:
- Security and maintenance of records of clients being treated by supervisees; and
- Unauthorized photocopying of proprietary test materials
SURVEYS
Surveys were sent to all members who recently submitted their Declarations of Completion of the Self-Assessment Guide and the Continuing Professional Development requirements, as well as those who participated in the first round of CPD audits. Over 700 members voluntarily completed these surveys and provided a great deal of detailed information. The Committee is reviewing the responses and will be using the information in the continuous process of program review. The Committee wishes to thank everyone who participated and looks forward to sharing what it has learned once the information has been analyzed.