Incorporating a Continuing Professional Development Process into Residency Training

Abstract

Continuing Professional development (CPD) has been defined as a “self-directed, ongoing, systematic and outcomes-focused approach to learning and professional development.” CPD is an important process that can be used to achieve a habit of lifelong learning and competence in the profession. The CPD process includes 5 steps – reflect, plan, act, evaluate and document. It has been postulated that introducing CPD early in a pharmacist's career encourages the development of life-long learning habits. Pharmacy residents are an ideal cohort to implement CPD into their program, since their accrediting body, the American Society of Health System Pharmacists (ASHP) already encourages the use of deliberate goal identification and evaluation throughout the resident’s training. We describe here the process of integrating a continuing professional development (CPD) model into a residency teaching certificate program, subsequent lessons learned and recommendations for the future.