Certificates and recording your CPD

Your certificate of completion records your name, the course title, the date you completed the course and its approximate learning time, for example approximately 2 or 3 CPD hours. The learning time is an estimate that includes reading, activities, reflection and the assessment.

The certificate confirms that you completed the course and passed its assessment. It should not be read as recognition of the course by Ahpra or any National Board: the course is not accredited, not approved and not endorsed by them. Practitioner Ethics is an independent education provider.

Please check that your name is shown as you want it to appear before you download. If something is wrong, email support@practitionerethics.com and we will help.

Each National Board has a CPD registration standard. Under the standards, you plan your CPD, choose activities relevant to your scope of practice, keep records, and declare at renewal that you have met the requirements. Ahpra and the Boards may audit those records. The number of hours, the categories of activity and the length of time you must keep records differ between professions, so always check your own Board's standard.

• Record actual time. Log the time you actually spent, which may be more or less than the approximate learning time on the certificate.
• Link it to your plan. Note which learning goal in your CPD plan the course addresses, for example strengthening boundaries, documentation or communication.
• Keep the reflection. Your reflective account shows what you learned and how you will change your practice. Many Boards emphasise reflection on the impact of CPD.
• Check profession-specific rules. Doctors record CPD through their CPD home, and some Boards set particular categories or credit systems. You decide whether and how a course fits.
• Store everything together. Keep the certificate, reflective account and any notes in one place so they are easy to produce if you are audited.

Our CPD hours planner can help you map courses to your annual requirement, and the CPD portfolio gives you a structured place to keep certificates and reflections.

Some practitioners complete our courses while responding to a notification, or to show learning while subject to conditions or undertakings. If that is your situation:

• Ask your indemnity insurer, medical defence organisation or lawyer whether a course is suitable before you rely on it, and check whether a condition requires a specific provider, format or approval of the education in advance.
• Keep the reflective account as well as the certificate. A certificate shows completion; reflection is what shows insight and change.
• Remember that a Board, panel or tribunal decides what weight to give any course, and no course can guarantee any regulatory outcome.

Our courses on demonstrating insight and writing a reflective statement explain how reflection is used in these settings, and the reflective statement template gives you a structure.

• Your certificates stay available in your account, so you can download them again whenever you need them.
• If your name changes, contact us and we can reissue your certificate in your new name, keeping the original completion date.
• If your organisation bought your place through a team licence, your certificate is still issued in your name and you can keep it for your own records.

A certificate on its own says little about what you learned. Auditors and Boards generally look for evidence that CPD was planned, relevant to your practice and reflected on. A short entry like the one below, kept with your certificate, usually does that well.

• Date and activity: the course title and the date you completed it.
• Time spent: the hours you actually spent, including reflection.
• Why you chose it: the learning need or plan goal it addressed, for example after a near miss, a change of role or feedback.
• What you learned: two or three specific points, in your own words.
• What you will do differently: a concrete change to your practice, and how you will check whether it has worked.

If you complete several related courses, a brief summary linking them shows a deliberate approach to an area of practice rather than a collection of unrelated certificates.