Overview
The Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Program is designed to assist registrants in maintaining their professional competence by continuously enhancing their knowledge and skills.
College registrants must ensure the following requirements are met throughout each two-year cycle of the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Program. The minimum requirements apply equally to practitioners of psychology and applied behaviour analysis and are not intended to discourage participation beyond the minimum requirements.
Overall Requirements
During each two-year CPD cycle, registrants must complete a minimum of 50 overall hours of continuing education and professional development activities. Activities completed will pertain to specific content including professional jurisprudence, legislation, standards, ethics and human rights, and supervision if applicable.
Hours
To satisfy this overall requirement, the 50 hours completed must include:
- At least 15 hours of Section A: Professional Interaction and Interdisciplinary Activities
- At least 15 hours of Section B: Continuing Education, Professional Training and Self-Directed Learning Activities
- Registrants may, but are not required to, earn additional hours from Section C: Additional Professional Development Activities
In many cases, credits or CEUs are equivalent to hours (1:1). Behaviour Analysts completing the BACB continuing education requirements, which typically equate 50 minutes of activity to 1 CEU, are permitted to count 1 CEU as 1 CPD hour, as the College allows for brief exchanges of knowledge, relevant discussion, and Q&A participation during an event to be included in activity hours.
Content
To satisfy the overall requirement, the 50 hours completed must include activities with content related to:
- Ethics and Jurisprudence (Ethics): At least 10 hours of activity content pertaining to legislation, standards or ethical conduct.
- Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI): At least 5 hours of activity content pertaining to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion to avoid practices that may unfairly discriminate against or would be experienced as oppressive by some individuals or groups.
- Supervision: At least 3 hours of activity content pertaining to supervisory practices (only applicable for those registrants which provide supervision to other health professionals, Supervised Practice registrants of the College, or students).
Content requirements may be completed through activities from Sections A, B and/or C. One activity may earn credit in multiple content categories (e.g., Ethics and Supervision) based upon the subject matter.
Activity Maximums
No more than 10 hours per single event or per activity type may be applied towards your completion of the overall requirements. These maximums have been put in place to ensure registrants are participating in a variety of learning mediums to maintain their professional knowledge and skills. However, there is no maximum to the number of hours which registrants can apply from activities completed under Sections A, B, or C towards their fulfilment of the overall program requirement once the Section A and B minimums are met.
- Single Event: Refers to engagement in a unique educational activity in which new knowledge or skill is acquired. Up to 10 hours per single event may be applied towards the program requirements. (e.g., individual programs, courses, workshops, topic-specific structured professional development meetings, invited speaker sessions, self-directed professional readings).
- Activity Type: Refers to a recurring professional activity. Up to 10 hours from all occurrences of an activity type may be applied towards the program requirements. (e.g., providing and/or receiving supervision, providing and/or receiving consultation, client outcome monitoring).
Examples:
- Single Event: If you have completed a 12-hour continuing education course, you may count up to 10 hours from that course towards the fulfillment of the overall program requirement. You may still count additional hours from other continuing education courses completed during the two-year period, but no more than 10 from each single event.
If attending an event, such as a professional conference or seminar which involves various speakers or multiple presentations, up to 10 hours from each session or presentation that enhanced your knowledge, skill and judgment may be recorded as a single entry within your records. - Activity Type: If you are providing or receiving supervision, or providing or receiving consultation, which are all types of peer interaction, you may count up to 10 hours in total for each of those activity types during a two-year cycle.
This means that if you have provided supervision on multiple occasions or to multiple individuals, you may record up to 10 hours total from all occurrences within a two-year cycle.
SAMPLE ACTIVITIES THAT APPLY FOR EACH CPD SECTION
This is not an exhaustive list of professional development activities which registrants may complete to obtain CPD hours.
| Section | Section A: Professional Interaction and Interdisciplinary activities (min. 15 hours) | Section B: Continuing Education, Professional Training and Self-Directed Learning activities (min. 15 hours) | Section C: Additional Professional Development activities (optional) |
| Examples | *Professional development programs, training courses, workshops or seminars with peer interaction Typically includes a specified agenda, curriculum or learning outcome, with or without formal CE credits. E.g., Barbara Wand Seminars in Professional Ethics, Standards and Conduct when attended with professional colleagues, leading to further discussion of the content. | **Professional development programs, training courses, workshops or seminars with or without peer interaction Typically includes a specified agenda, curriculum or learning outcome, with or without formal CE credits. In-person or on-line completion. | Preparation for: Delivery of workshops, conferences, presentations, and professional dissemination Note: only preparation time is considered applicable for these, or similar activities, as the delivery or dissemination of information is typically intended to enhance the knowledge or skills of the recipients, rather than the presenter. |
| Invited speaker sessions or conferences with peer interaction In-person or on-line attendance or speaking. | Reading professional literature E.g., journal articles, books, manuals for new tests or assessment tools, etc. | Preparation for: Teaching or training Developing or updating materials with new information to: instruct or guest lecture in a university or community college level course or practicum; supervise student research; lead an organizational event or presentation; or train staff within an organization, such as a school, care facility, or correctional setting. Note: excludes dissemination to client parents or caregivers on ABA interventions, as this constitutes service delivery, which is not applicable for CPD hours. | |
| Structured professional development meetings Typically includes a specified agenda or knowledge/skill outcome; led by employers or third-party organizations. | Reviewing new or amended jurisprudence E.g., professionally relevant Legislation, Standards, Ethical Codes, etc. | Professional writing, reviewing and editing E.g., scientific papers, book or book chapters, journal articles, decision letters for peer reviewed articles, content for popular media related to professional topics. Note: excludes activities which would otherwise be required during the course of client service provision (e.g., clinical reports or parent/ caregiver training materials. | |
| Case conferences | Viewing professionally relevant talks, podcasts or other media content Independent viewing of live or archived professional media. | Formal research Designing, conducting, collecting or analyzing research data for your own or others’ professional projects. | |
| Completion of Mentorship or Coaching programs Voluntary or required programs are both applicable. | Structured client outcome monitoring Administering structured client outcome measures and using the information to plan further intervention. | ||
| Peer Assisted Review participation Undergoing a Quality Assurance Peer Assisted Review (PAR) or acting as a College Assessor or Peer Nominated Reviewer in the PAR process. | Professional Leadership E.g., acting member of a professionally relevant committee, board, association or working group. Including, but not limited to, College committees and the Board of Directors. | ||
| Providing and/or receiving Consultation | Providing feedback for a public consultation to the College | ||
| Providing and/or receiving Supervision | Organizational consultation | ||
| Colloquia | |||
| Oral Examiner participation for College registration examinations | |||
| Grand rounds | |||
| Professional discussion board participation |
*Professional development programs, training courses, workshops or seminars are listed as applicable activities under both Section Aand Section B. When these activities are completed independently, the CPD hours may count towards Section B. If the activity involved group attendance and/or peer interaction, the hours may count as either Section A or B.
Example 1: If a registrant independently attends a 3-hour workshop which included 2 hours of lecture and 1 hour of scheduled breakout room discussions with other attendees, registrants may record either 3 hours in Section B, or 2 hours under Section B for the lecture and 1 hour under Section A for the breakout room discussions.
Example 2: If a registrant were to attend the same event described in Example 1 and also participated in 0.5 hours of additional, unscheduled peer interaction, such as Q&A or dissemination discussions, this time may be counted in Section A in addition to the 3 scheduled activity hours.