Participatory vs Individual CPD: What Counts as Which

Of the 35 hours of CPD required for revalidation, at least 20 have to be participatory. The remaining 15 can be individual. The split exists because the NMC wants evidence that you’re learning alongside other professionals, not just reading on your own.

The participatory/individual distinction isn’t intuitive. A webinar can be one or the other depending on whether it was live. A study day is participatory even if you didn’t speak. A mentor relationship is participatory CPD for the mentor, not just the mentee. This chapter walks through where the line sits in practice.

The principle of participatory CPD

The NMC’s published definition is “CPD activity that involves interaction with one or more other professionals”. The interaction can be:

• Face-to-face, in a room with other learners.
• Synchronous online, where you could ask questions, contribute to a chat, or participate in discussion in real time.
• Structured discussion, in a peer-review meeting, journal club, or action learning set.
• Teaching or mentoring, where you led the learning for someone else.

The key word is “interaction”. You don’t have to speak. You have to be in a setting where interaction was possible and learning was the structured outcome.

Activities that clearly count as participatory

Study days and conferences. The classic. Any in-person event with structured sessions is participatory CPD for the duration of the learning content. Travel time and breaks don’t count.

Live webinars with audience interaction. A webinar where you can ask questions in chat, participate in polls, or contribute to discussion. The interactive design is what makes it participatory.

Mentoring and student supervision. Acting as a practice supervisor, practice assessor, or mentor under the NMC’s Standards for Student Supervision and Assessment is participatory CPD for you. The structured discussions you have with the student count toward your hours.

Peer-review meetings. Case discussion meetings, reflective practice groups, schwartz rounds, and similar.

Journal clubs. Where colleagues read an article and discuss it together.

Clinical supervision. When structured around learning outcomes, not just routine management 1:1s. The supervisor and supervisee can both count it.

Action learning sets. A formal group methodology where members bring problems to the group and learn through structured discussion.

Multidisciplinary team meetings with teaching content. MDTs where there’s a structured educational component (case-of-the-week teaching, specialist input) count for the teaching portion.

Activities that clearly count as individual

E-learning modules. Even when comprehensive, e-learning on its own is individual CPD. Single-player learning by design.

Pre-recorded video lectures. Watching the recording of a conference you couldn’t attend live.

Reading: journal articles, professional books, NICE guidelines, NMC publications.

Listening to podcasts.

Independent reflective writing. A reflective journal you keep on your own.

Webinars in catch-up mode. Even if the original webinar was participatory, watching it later as a recording is individual; you couldn’t interact.

The boundary cases

These are where audit auditors most often query:

Routine 1:1 with line manager. Not CPD. The structure is management, not learning.

Operational team meetings. Not CPD unless there was a defined teaching segment.

Informal corridor conversations with colleagues. Not CPD, regardless of how valuable they were professionally. The NMC requires structure.

Webinars you watched live but in catch-up mode after technical issues. Borderline. If you genuinely participated through chat or could have, count it. If you just watched, individual.

MDT meetings without teaching. Routine case-management MDTs without a structured learning component aren’t CPD.

Conference networking. The talks count. The networking, the receptions and the breaks don’t.

How to log participatory CPD

The audit auditor wants to see two things: that the activity happened, and that it was genuinely participatory.

Evidence that satisfies both:

• Study day certificate with date and duration.
• Conference agenda showing the sessions you attended.
• Webinar registration confirmation showing the live event date.
• Peer-review meeting attendance documented by the meeting organiser.
• Mentoring contact log for student supervision activities.

For activities without formal certification (a journal club at work, an informal peer review), keep a short written record:

• Date, duration.
• Who else was present (NMC PIN if known, role at minimum).
• Topic.
• One sentence on what you learned.

Two lines of text in a Word document beats no record at all. Audit auditors are reasonable about informal CPD as long as some structured record exists.

What if you’re short on participatory hours

The most common shortfall isn’t on the 35 total. It’s on the 20 participatory specifically. A nurse who has done lots of e-learning might have 35 hours of CPD but only 10 of it participatory.

The fix isn’t to invent activities. It’s to look harder at activities you’ve already done:

• Student mentoring: every structured contact hour with a student.
• MDT teaching slots: any time there was educational content.
• Clinical supervision: every session structured around learning.
• Informal peer reviews: any structured discussion of a case or article with colleagues.

Many nurses do more participatory CPD than they realise and just haven’t recorded it. The audit is satisfied by structured records of structured activities, not by certificates only.

If you’re genuinely short, talk to your practice educator about adding mentoring activity, or look at your trust’s calendar of clinical supervision opportunities. A single 6-hour clinical study day fills nearly a third of the participatory requirement.

The next chapter moves to the third revalidation requirement: the five pieces of practice-related feedback.