Australasian Society of Career Medical Officers

The CPDP is a Continuing Medical Education program developed by the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (RCPA). This innovative program is based on self-directed learning through the documentation of educational activities in a Learning Diary.

At the heart of the CPDP is the principle that new learning is most relevant for the professional if the acquisition of new knowledge, skills or attitudes enhances his or her ability to solve problems in the workplace. The stimulus for this learning lies in the challenges of everyday practice. This approach recognises and emphasises the individual nature of the learning interests and needs of the practising professional.

There is no doubt that ALL medical practitioners will soon have to produce evidence of their continuing medical education - to their medical insurers, to their employers and to their patients. In fact, the NSW Medical Registration Board has foreshadowed compulsory CME for medical practitioners in a recent newsletter (January 2001). The great advantage to CMOs is that CPDP is easy, user friendly and logs those aspects of your own practice that provide a significant educational event. With as little as 5-10 minutes per day, the CPDP allows you to note down your educational experiences and, at the end of each six-month period, the results are officially tabulated and reported by ASCMO. This report is the certifiable evidence of your own CME and is acceptable as such, throughout Australia. The facility also exists for you to log on at work as well as home, and also to compose your own reports from the data that you collect.

ASCMO is able to offer this log-book style program to members of ASCMO both in electronic (Windows ONLY) and manual forms.The cost is $55-00 annually for the electronic version and $110-00 annually for the paper version.I

[Re: Macintosh users: as our supplier is not upgrading the Macintosh version, members with Macintosh computers are advised to use the manual version].