Participating in forum discussions and reading or viewing content on www.vetsurgeon.org counts towards the average 35 hours of documented Continuing Professional Development you are required to undertake each year.

To count towards your CPD requirement, your activities must be part of a documented process of appraisal and development. In other words, you must keep a record of your activity and how it has contributed to your professional development.

COMING SOON:

CLAIM CPD
To claim CPD, click the link towards the top right of the screen, adjacent to the search box.

A drop down box appears, into which you enter the time you have spent (in minutes) on the subject of the page. In addition, you may enter notes to remind you what you learned and how you plan to use the information.

Press submit, and your entry is added to your CPD record in your personal profile (which is visible only to you and accessed under 'My Account > View My Profile in the main menu).

If you later return to the page and spend more time on the subject, you can click the button again and amend the record.

WHAT TO CLAIM
You can use 'Claim CPD' to record time spent reading, researching, viewing or participating in any content which can reasonably be argued to advance your knowledge and proficiency as a vet, including forum discussion threads, news articles, events and videos.

FORUMS
In deciding whether to claim CPD for a forum thread, the only question you need to ask is 'Did I learn something relevant to my work?' If you did, then you can claim it as CPD, regardless of whether you actively participated in the discussion or just read the thread.

For example, if you post a question for your peers and learn something from the replies, you can claim the time you spent posting and reading. 

If you answer someone else's question, again, the acid test is whether you learned something from the discussion. So if you had to research your answer, or learned something from other people's replies, that does.

You can claim CPD just by reading threads, but clearly you'll be able to record more CPD time if you get stuck in to the discussion.

It's stating the obvious, but to count towards your CPD allowance, the forum threads you claim must concern a subject which can reasonably be argued to advance your knowledge and proficiency as a veterinary surgeon (so RCVS-bashing posts or discussions about the weather won't qualify!)

NEWS
You may decide that reading a short news story hardly warrants creating a record of the two minutes you spent. But if you read a story that caused you to research a subject in greater detail, either on the site or elsewhere, then record the total time you spent on it.

CPD
If you attend a CPD-qualifying event listed on VetSurgeon.org, you can add it to your VetSurgeon.org CPD record. Handy if the event organiser didn't provide a certificate or you lost it!

GALLERIES
Time spent watching videos on VetSurgeon.org can count towards your CPD record, as can submitting images for comment by one of our curators.

Further information about CPD requirements is available from the RCVS website: http://www.rcvs.org.uk/cpd