Continued Professional Development Requirements for Anaesthetists

To ensure that every patient in Australia and New Zealand receives the best care available, all anaesthetists and pain medicine physicians are required to partake in a continuing professional development program (CPD).  

The new CPD program is coming (for most of us) and it’s time to get familiar with it. If you aren’t totally familiar with the new ANZCA CPD program handbook, it is a 41-page document outlining everything you need to know in detail.  

Whilst reading all this information will be essential to ensure you are ticking all of the training and development boxes, we have summarised the annual requirements for you.  

Requirements

CPD Plan

Develop a CPD plan at the beginning of each year and self-evaluate your activity at the end of the year. The time taken to do this can be counted towards your “review Performance” time. 

Hours  

Complete a minimum of 50 hours of activities on the following areas: 

• Minium 25 hours of ‘Practice Evaluation’ activities which are divided into: 
  1. ‘Review Performance’ requiring a minimum of 5 hours 
  2. ‘Measuring Outcomes’ requiring a minimum of 5 hours  
• Minium 12.5 hours on ‘Knowledge and skills’ activities
  

Cultural activity 

Complete a cultural activity every year – this will be included in ‘Review Performance’. 

Emergency response Activity  

Complete an Emergency Response Activity every year – this will be included in ‘Measuring Outcomes’. 

EXTRA

Complete at least one of the following every year:

• Patient experience survey – a ‘Review Performance’ activity 
• MSF – a ‘Review Performance’ activity 
• Peer Review – a ‘Review Performance’ activity 

• Clinical Audit – a ‘Measuring Outcomes’ activity

Maintain your records for 3 years.

 Examples of each Category  

Review Performance Activities  

• Cultural safety 
• Performance appraisal 
• Patient experience survey  
• MSF 
• Peer review 
• Case discussions 
• Team training scenarios 
• Examining for ANZCA primary or final Viva exam 
• Medicolegal reports 

Measuring Outcomes Activities 

• Clinical audit 
• Report of audit findings 
• M&M 
• Incident monitoring 

• RCA 
• Emergency response activities, including: 
  – CICO 
  – Cardiac arrest 
  – Anaphlyaxis 
  – Major haemorrhage 
  – ASBD 
  – COVID 19 airway management 
  Management of CNS oxygen toxicity 

Knowledge and Skills Activities 

• Attendance at lectures, presentations or education sessions 
• Presenting at conferences and meetings 
• Short Courses, Workshops, PBL discussions and small group discussions 
• Courses towards a formal qualification 
• Journal Reding 
• Teaching, including preparing and presenting tutorials  
• WBAs for trainees 
• Examining (including writing or marking questions) 

Alternative to ANZCAs CPD program 

Recent changes made by the Medical Board of Australia mean that you can now choose which CPD program you wish to be a part of. While traditionally this role has been taken on by the colleges, there are now alternatives. The ASA has partnered with the AMA to provide one of these alternatives, called “CPD home”. If you are a member of the ASA or AMA, it costs just $440 a year. 

While there are many benefits of being a fellow (member) of ANZCA, arguably, there is no longer a requirement to continue to be one, if you participate in an alternate CPD program.