Continuing Professional Development for Physiotherapists in the UK

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is the educational process by which professional peoplemaintain, enhance and broaden their skills, knowledge and competence. The objective of this report is tointroduce CPD for physiotherapists in the UK to Japanese physiotherapists. CPD is a cyclical process,involving the identification of needs, planning, implementation, assessment of benefits and identification offurther needs. It encompasses a range of ongoing education including formal learning and unplanned learningthat takes place through practice. Individual physiotherapists are responsible for their own CPD.In addition, this report introduces rotational schemes for newly qualified physiotherapists, peer reviewand learning portfolio as examples of CPD activities. The rotations may be with different workingenvironments in primary and secondary care, and newly qualified physiotherapists should develop theirclinical skills relevant to those clinical areas. Peer review provides an opportunity to evaluate the clinicalreasoning about the patient\u27s episode and to identify learningneeds. Finally a portfolio is a collection ofevidence that demonstrates learning and development as well as a tool for planning future learning