Review Tuesday: RACP CPD information session

Today’s ‘Review Tuesday’. The Royal Australasian College of Physicians is a learned college responsible for training, educating and representing over 13,500 physicians and paediatricians in Australasia [1]. Including me. Effective last 1 January, it made its continuing professional development program [2] mandatory for all its Fellows [3]. Non participation means no RACP rights and privileges. And from last 1 July the Medical Board of Australia made participation in a CPD program a mandatory requirement for renewal of medical registration [4]. The College’s CPD online recording system’s called MyCPD [5]. Last night in Melbourne the College held a 2-hour information session on CPD and MyCPD – because Fellows’ 2010 data must be loaded into MyCPD by 31 March. With 70-80 of my colleague physicians, I attended. An elderly lot we were. Seemingly younger physicians are having little problem with mandatory CPD and MyCPD. But not so older physicians. They barely constrained themselves during the didactic presentation by the (non-medical) head of the College’s CPD Unit. Then came question time, which was a signal for a cathartic explosion of anger and frustration. Especially with the fact there’s no evidence mandatory CPD produces better and safer doctors. The chairwoman struggled to keep control of the session. Eventually she relented and closed it – 20 minutes early. I went home replete with two MyCPD points (towards the 100 I need for 2011). I learned nothing – except how angry and frustrated my colleagues are with mandatory CPD and MyCPD. Ho hum.