Continuing Professional Development

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) refers to the engagement in activities which maintain and enhance professional knowledge, skills, and judgment throughout a veterinarian’s career. 

There are many activities that contribute to CPD, including reading journals or College publications, independent research, delivering presentations, teaching courses, writing for publication, consulting with peers, rounds, mentoring, and working with professional associations or regulatory organizations.

CPD includes activities you pursue to maintain your professional competence, keep up with innovations and advancements, or develop expertise in a new area or scope of practice. CPD activities do not include routine work-related responsibilities.  A key way to differentiate CPD activities from routine professional responsibilities is that CPD activities lead to professional reflection and to identifying the impact the new information may have on your practice.

Reporting CPD

Veterinarians are required to report the number of CPD hours they complete each year. This information is collected during the annual licence renewal process.

The College recommends that licensed members complete at least 50 hours of CPD each year, or 150 hours over a three-year period.

The College categorizes CPD activities as follows:

Organized Learning Activities

A1 Courses, conferences, wet-labs, seminars, and workshops
A2 Training and studying for supplementary credentials 
A3 Online learning modules and webinars
A4 Presentations given and published material written
A5 Other organized learning

Self-directed Learning Activities

B1 Consulting with peers, participating in rounds, and mentoring
B2 Reading professional publications and reviewing other media
B3 Independent research
B4 Contributions to professional organizations
B5 Other self-directed learning

An essential component of effective continuing professional development is reflection on the value of the activity as it relates to your professional development and your practice. Questions to consider include: “What is my professional development goal related to this activity?”, “What was the takeaway message?” and “How will I change my practice?”

The CPD Activity Log is available to veterinarians in the Professional Practice Portal.  Using the CPD Activity Log, veterinarians can log CPD activities that they have completed, assign activity codes to each activity, and indicate learning outcomes.  The log summarizes the hours logged for each activity type, and this information transfers automatically to the online Annual Renewal Form.