Self-Directed Learning- CPD | Faculty of Medicine

The Royal College’s Framework of Continuing Professional Development Activities adds the following:

“Section 2: Self-learning Activities are planned to address specific needs, enhance awareness of new evidence potentially relevant to practice or enhance the quality of multiple system”.

Planning your Continuing Professional Development activities

Assess yourself and your practice to identify gaps or problems that you want to address
Be aware of learning opportunities
Make choices of learning activities that will keep you up-to-date and support the changes you want to make
Keep track of what you are doing including the impact of each activity

Evaluate your SDL Needs

In order to identify your goals, the first step is an identification of what is needed. Assessment activities provide data with feedback to individual physicians or groups related to their personal or collective knowledge or performance across a broad range of professional practice domains. This feedback enables the identification of needs and development of future learning opportunities relevant to practice.

Assessment activities:

Can help you choose the CPD activities most relevant to you
Contribute to your MOC or Mainpro credits
May focus on knowledge or clinical performance or other competencies

Examples of assessment activities and sources include:

Chart or Practice Audit with Feedback
Multi-source feedback
Simulation
Knowledge Tests with Feedback
Educational/administrative assessments

Suggested Resource

Loyens, S.M.M., Magda, J. & Rikers, R.M.J.P. Educ Psychol Rev (2008) 20: 411.

Self-Developed Activities

Resources to Plan Your Learning

Activities planned to address specific needs, enhance awareness of new evidence potentially relevant to practice or enhance the quality of multiple systems are part of this section. Here are some useful resources to plan your learning:

Centre for Learning in Practice

“The Centre for Learning in Practice (CLIP) is a unit within the Office of Professional Affairs (OPA) of the Royal College that is dedicated to studying, promoting and participating in scholarly discussion about the theory, strategies and interventions that enhance physician learning both as individuals or members of a health care team.”

MAINPORT ePortfolio

MAINPORT ePortfolio is a continuing professional development (CPD) planning tool that allows physicians to input their learning goals, create comprehensive plans to achieve each goal and track their progress during the year.

The Royal College includes useful information on CPD activities you can record for MOC.

For Family Practitioners, the CFPC offers:

Self-Learning program
CFP Mainpro+ Articles
Pearls
Other CPD Programs
TRIP Database. Trip is a clinical search engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality research evidence to support their practice and/or care.

Compass, McGill

The self-directed COMPASS aims to support your self-directed learning (SDL) process. We encourage you to use the self-directed learning COMPASS often. It includes:

Instructions about how to develop a Personal Learning Plan.
A list of resources on self-directed learning such as the accredited Self-Learning activities from the RCPSC and CFPC.
Resource assessment.
Self-directed COMPASS assessment.

Programs Designed by Others

Programs designed by others are the most predominant type of CPD/CPD activity. These very popular activities are developed by planning committees based on their understanding of what you need to know or be able to do.

Office of CPD Programs and CPD programs created by uOttawa partners are listed in the CPD Event Calendar. You can also access our CPD Online Courses and Webinars .

Online Courses and Tools