How to Record CPD: NMC Portfolio Standards

The NMC doesn’t mandate any particular CPD recording format. Paper, spreadsheet, dedicated portfolio software, or trust-provided platform are all acceptable. What matters is that each entry is verifiable at audit.

This chapter covers the minimum standards and the simplest format that works.

The minimum entry per CPD activity

Each entry needs:

• Date of the activity (or date range for ongoing activity).
• Title of the activity, specific enough to identify it.
• Provider: who delivered or organised the activity.
• Duration in hours and minutes (count only learning time, not breaks or travel).
• Category: participatory or individual.
• Topic: what the activity covered (one or two sentences).
• Reflection: what you learned and how it relates to your practice (one or two sentences).
• Code section: the dominant NMC Code section the learning addresses.
• Evidence reference: link to the certificate, agenda or structured note that supports the entry.

Eight items per entry. Two to four minutes per entry to record properly. Across 30 to 40 entries in a three-year cycle, the total recording effort is about two hours, spread across three years.

A simple spreadsheet format

The single-spreadsheet approach that works:

Date	Activity	Provider	Hours	Category	Topic	Reflection	Code section	Evidence file
2025-03-14	IPC Level 2 refresher	Trust IPC team	4	Participatory	Hand hygiene, PPE, isolation	Reinforced 5 moments, especially moment 3	S19	/cpd/2025/ipc-cert.pdf
2025-04-08	NICE NG136 reading	Self	1	Individual	Hypertension management	Updated my BP target ranges for elderly patients	S6	/cpd/2025/ng136-notes.docx

A Google Sheet or Excel file in a cloud folder is portable, audit-ready, and survives changes of device.

The folder structure

Alongside the spreadsheet, a folder structure for evidence:

Revalidation [year]/
├── cpd-log.xlsx (the spreadsheet)
├── certificates/
│   ├── 2024-IPC-cert.pdf
│   ├── 2024-safeguarding-cert.pdf
│   └── 2025-BLS-cert.pdf
├── reflections/
│   ├── nice-ng136-notes.docx
│   ├── journal-club-march.docx
│   └── peer-review-may.docx
├── feedback/
│   ├── patient-card-1.jpg
│   ├── colleague-email-may.pdf
│   └── friends-and-family-results.pdf
└── reflective-accounts/
    ├── form-6-account-1.pdf
    ├── form-6-account-2.pdf
    └── ...

When audit arrives, the response is to copy or share this folder. Three minutes to assemble; the structure does the work.

What about dedicated portfolio software

Paid platforms (Pebble Pad, FourteenFish, RCNi Portfolio, MyProgress) offer features beyond the simple spreadsheet:

• Drag-and-drop evidence linking.
• Direct integration with some NHS training systems.
• Reminders and deadline tracking.
• Templates aligned to NMC requirements.

The trade-off: they cost money, require login each time, and some lock your data into proprietary formats.

The NMC accepts portfolios from any platform. The audit doesn’t favour or require any particular tool.

For nurses who find spreadsheets too tedious, paid portfolio software can be worth the cost. For everyone else, the spreadsheet plus folder approach is simpler, free, and just as audit-ready.

What audit auditors actually want to see

Three signals in your records that suggest a strong portfolio:

1. Entries dated close to the activity. Recording within a week of the event reads as ongoing practice. Recording weeks or months later reads as retrospective reconstruction.

2. Variety of activities. Different types (formal courses, reading, mentoring, peer review), different topics (clinical, professional, leadership), different Code sections.

3. Reflection that connects. The brief reflection should connect the activity to practice, not just describe what happened.

What audit auditors don’t want

Pages of generic reflection. The reflection is one or two sentences per entry: concise, specific, practice-connected. Long generic reflections suggest filler.

Boilerplate text repeated. “This learning was relevant to my practice” copy-pasted into every entry suggests the entries weren’t thought about.

Activities listed without evidence. Every entry should have a link to something: a certificate, an agenda, a structured note. Activities listed without any supporting reference are the first to attract follow-up.

The mid-cycle review

Quarterly or annually, review the log against the four pillars of the Code:

• Is each pillar represented?
• Is the 20-hour participatory floor on track?
• Are there gaps where you’ve done lots of one type of CPD and none of another?

A short review surfaces gaps while there’s still time to address them. The end-of-cycle scramble usually produces a thinner portfolio than steady quarterly review.

The next chapter is the final chapter of Part 5. It covers how to plan CPD across the three-year cycle so that the submission is on track rather than rushed.