Evaluation of the GDC’s Enhanced Continuing Professional Development Scheme Published

The final report from our recent evaluation of the General Dental Council’s (GDC) Enhanced Continuing Professional Development (Enhanced CPD) is now available online.

The intention of the study, commissioned by the GDC, was to evaluate, understand and learn about how the Enhanced CPD scheme is working. The study was conducted in three strands:

1. A rapid evidence assessment (REA) and scoping interviews with GDC staff
2. An analysis of an anonymised, Enhanced CPD dataset containing information on 165,983 registrants; an online survey of dental registrants which elicited 2,817 responses; and one-to-one online interviews with 33 registrants.
3. The third (overlapping) strand focused on analysis which included two learning exchange events held with GDC staff.

The evaluation concludes that compliance with the scheme’s verifiable CPD hours is high (94.6%) but a greater understanding of key areas such as recommended topics, personal development plans (PDPs), zero-hours returns, and grace periods are required.

Certification was also identified as a barrier to compliance with some professionals finding that their CPD providers did not supply certificates that met the GDC’s wording requirements.

The full report is available to download now as well as the GDC’s press release. The work has attracted considerable interest from the dental press, including the British Dental Journal, Dental Nursing, The Dentist, The Probe, Scottish Dental Magazine, DentalLab Journal.