Continuing Professional Development

Once registered with us, Registered Hearing Aid Dispensers must follow and demonstrate compliance with our Code of Practice. To facilitate this, we have established a process of Continuing Professional Development. In this section, you can find information about the requirements of CPD and about continuing your registration.

If you cannot find the information you are looking for below then please contact hac@thehearingaidcouncil.org.uk for more information.

From 1 April 2009, you must meet new CPD Standards. You can read about these new standards and how to meet them below. If you would like to read about the old CPD standards, which applied up until 31 March 2009, please click here.

New CPD standards

Following consultation, the Hearing Aid Council has decided to change the CPD standards. The new standards will apply from 1 April 2009 and the previous, points-based systems will cease.

Our new CPD standards exactly mirror those you will have to meet when you are transferred to the Health Professions Council (HPC). The Council hopes that by introducing these CPD standards now, you will be better placed to comply with HPC requirements once you are transferred. The new standards also give you the flexibility to plan your own CPD in a way that suits your work, your learning needs, your preferences, and the time and resources available to you.

What do these changes mean for dispensers?

The new standards

From 1st April 2009, dispensers will be required to:

  1. 1. Maintain a continuous, up to date and accurate record of their CPD activities.
  2. 2. Demonstrate that their CPD activities are a mixture of learning activities relevant to their current and future practice.
  3. 3. Seek to ensure that their CPD has contributed to the quality of their practice and service delivery.
  4. 4. Seek to ensure that their CPD benefits clients.
  5. 5. Present a written profile containing evidence of their CPD upon request.

How you meet the standards

You can make your own decisions about the kinds of CPD activity that are relevant to your role and your work. You are no longer restricted to just those CPD activities which carried HAC CPD points. For example, you could choose CPD activities that involve in-house training, mentoring, reading or reviewing journal articles or attending industry events. You may decide that you could meet the new standards by taking part in the BSHAA CUE scheme or CPD schemes run by other professional bodies. To ensure you meet these standards, you should:

It is up to you to decide how much CPD activity you should do to meet the new standards. Rather than focus on how much time you spend on CPD, you should use your professional judgement to critically reflect on what you need to learn to improve your practice for clients. Based on this self-assessment, you should pick a variety of activities that could help you reach that higher standard of practice. As you undertake the activities you should reflect on whether you are developing in the manner you intended and what further CPD is needed. To summarise, the key is not how much CPD you do, but what you learn and how it benefits clients.

It is up to you to choose what kind of CPD activity you should do. You may decide that you could meet our standards by taking part in a scheme run by your professional body or your employer. In deciding what activities to do, you should aim to choose a variety of activities, not just one type of learning. More importantly though, the new standards emphasise that you should aim for your CPD to improve your work and benefit clients. The CPD activities you choose may not actually improve your work, due to factors beyond your control, but when you choose an activity you should be able to explain how it benefit clients. Perhaps you underwent a CPD activity with the intention that it would improve the quality of your audiometry or would indirectly benefit clients by supporting your team to deliver more effective aftercare.

The new, flexible approach means that your CPD can take account of how you work, whether part-time or full-time, whether in the NHS or in private practice, whether dealing with clients or in management, education or research (or anywhere else).

What CPD acitivity can you do to meet the standards?

To see a summary of the type of CPD activity you might do, please click here.

Demonstrating compliance – what happens if you are audited?

We will randomly audit 5 per cent of dispensers in December 2009 to check progress in meeting the new standards. The aim of this audit is to provide feedback to dispensers, employers and professional bodies about where improvements need to be made to improve future compliance. The HPC will audit dispensers every two years. So you should expect to be audited on a regular basis and be prepared to respond if asked. If you are audited you will be asked to provide a CPD profile explaining how you met the standards and evidence that you completed the CPD activities outlined in the profile. This means you need to record your CPD in a way that enables you to fill in a CPD profile.

What is a CPD profile?

The main parts of your CPD profile will be:

The summary of your practice history should help to show the us how your CPD activities are linked to your work. This part of the CPD profile should help you to show how your activities are relevant to your current or future work.

Your statement of how you have met our standards should clearly show how you believe you meet each of our standards, and should refer to all the CPD activities you have undertaken and the evidence you are sending in to support your statement.

You may find the HPC’s guidance on filling in a CPD profile helpful. To read it click here.

We will shortly publish a sample CPD profile on this page.

To see a summary of the type of CPD activity you might do, please click here.

If you would like to read about the old CPD standards, which applied up until 31 March 2009, please click here.