When you become a therapist and join a professional body, it is very likely that they will require a commitment from you for life- (or at least career-) long learning. This is usually called ‘Continuous Professional Development' (CPD) or ‘Continuing Education' (CE). Given that it’s going to cost you time, money and effort to meet this requirement, how can you get the most out of it?
How much CPD should I do?
Your professional body will probably set a target for the minimum number of hours of CPD you should do each year. It’s always wise to check this before you start to plan any CPD as they can have slightly different targets.
The majority of hypnotherapy organisations working within the UK voluntary regs seem to ask for between 15 and 25 hours per year. There is no upper limit, of course, and many therapists regularly exceed these targets.
What counts as CPD?
Most professional bodies will accept a variety of activities
such as:
- Live/interactive training such as lectures, conferences, workshops and seminars – in person
or online,
- Reading content relevant to your practice – books, ebooks or online articles (so reading this blog
should be fine!),
- Recorded training such as videos and webinars,
- Relevant research.
Your professional body will almost certainly expect you to vary the types of CPD you undertake over the year. Some actively encourage this by laying down restrictions on how many hours of any particular activity they will count towards your annual total.
As with the previous question, the most important thing is to check the rules of the professional body you join rather than assuming that one, long activity will cover their requirements for the whole year.
What are the benefits of doing CPD?
- It keeps your knowledge up to date. Therapy, just like other
fields, is constantly evolving and keeping up with the latest knowledge will
keep your practice relevant and effective.
- It expands your training into new areas. However good your
initial practitioner training was, there is always more to learn.
- It improves your confidence by confirming and improving your
knowledge and skills in familiar areas.
- It promotes flexibility of approach. Different trainers
approach similar material in different ways so even if you do more than one
course on the same topic, you can learn from all of them.
- It demonstrates (to clients as well as your professional body) a commitment to provide the best service you can.
- Some forms of CPD (e.g. conferences, workshops) allow you to network with
other therapists, meet and learn from experts, and build a support network.
- It can help you develop a specialism.
What CPD should I choose?
- Taking more than one course on the same topic is fine. The
revision will be handy if they overlap and seeing different approaches to the
subject helps you respond more flexibly to clients' needs.
- As you get more confident and experienced, branch out into
new areas, to expand your practice. You should still plan ahead
to some extent but leave yourself the freedom to sign up for a course on impulse
as well. Just make sure you will hit your targets by the end of the year.
- Consider including some non-therapeutic topics each year, such as business building, accounting, advertising or first aid. Remember you are a businessperson as well as a therapist and acquiring these skills helps you stay within the law and run your business efficiently.
Where can I find good CPD training?
- If you belong to any social media groups, or if you network with other therapists in some other way, ask for recommendations. Your supervisor may have recommendations too.
- Many schools that offer practitioner training also offer CPD. Ask around.
- (Here's the plug, it's short, I promise!) I offer courses, both free and paid, which you can find HERE.
- Directories such as cpd4therapists.com, the Hypnotherapy Directory, Udemy and Eventbrite offer courses, some of which may be of interest.
And, finally ...
Check your professional body's requirements carefully and
always keep your records up to date as you go in case you are audited. It’s a
pain to have to try to reconstruct a whole year’s records when the request
drops into your inbox.
Keep evidence of CPD wherever you can. Courses often provide
certificates of attendance but it’s harder to prove you have read a book. Keep
a note of all your reading: book titles for paper or Kindle options and URLs with
access dates for online articles. Write a brief synopsis of everything you
read. Not only does it prove you did more than just visit the page or buy the
book, but it can also be very useful to browse when you know you have seen a technique somewhere
and can’t recall where. Keeping this on a word document or spreadsheet allows you to search it.
Most of all, plan your CPD so that you will enjoy it. Don’t think of it as 'red tape' or a 'hoop' to be jumped through to please someone else.
Remember
how exciting hypnotherapy was when you did your original training? Keeping in
touch with that feeling as you develop experience and skills is a benefit to both you
and your clients.
Resources
https://www.aphp.co.uk/cmsuploads/33/APHP%20Documentation%2021829%20Doc%20for%20website%201.pdf
https://www.cpdstandards.com/what-is-cpd/benefits-of-cpd/
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Author: Debbie Waller is an experienced hypnotherapist and hypnotherapy trainer. She is the author of The Hypnotherapist's Companion and Their Worlds, Your Words and a co-writer of the Hypnotherapy Handbook, all of which are available from Amazon.
Find out more about Debbie's services on
Yorkshire Hypnotherapy Training - multi accredited hypnotherapy practitioner training, taster days and foundation levels.
CPD Expert - accredited CPD and other therapy training (online and workshops options), expert and qualified hypnotherapy supervision
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