Undertaking CPD as a private practitioner
Date published:
02 Feb 2026
20% of RACP Fellows indicate they work in a private practice. Our CPD and Member Services Centre teams are often contacted by physicians working in private practice seeking support and guidance regarding undertaking relevant CPD.
While we’re still early in the year and developing your Professional Development Plan (PDP) may not yet be on your radar, we’ve collated some tips and tricks for the upcoming CPD year.
Challenges of CPD for private practitioners
Many private practitioners find that Category 1 (Educational Activities) hours accrue smoothly, with only a minimum of 12.5 hours required. Examples of eligible activities are: attending lectures, workshops, seminars, undertaking courses, reading journals, being part of a committee or working group, undertaking presentations.
It is the CPD requirements for Category 2 (Reviewing Performance) and Category 3 (Measuring Outcomes) that prove to be more challenging for those working in private practice.
The nature of private practice can throw up challenges for physicians, particularly those who work in a solo practice, have limited colleague interaction, or face geographic barriers such as being regional or rural.
Engaging and connecting with peers
A core aim of the regulatory changes from the Medical Board of Australia brought into effect in 2024, was to encourage all medical practitioners to engage with peers or colleagues to review their practice and measure their outcomes. This was designed to ensure that they are not practising in isolation.
Meeting CPD requirements in a solitary private practice no doubt requires extra planning, but we have good news, there are several ways to easily undertake CPD as a private practitioner.
We have good news for our private practitioners! Categories 2 and 3 are easier than first thought. Throughout this article, we will provide some tips and tricks you can use in undertaking your CPD in 2026 as a private practitioner.
A great place to start
It goes without saying that the RACP MyCPD Handbook is a gold mine of information filled with all you need to undertake and complete your CPD. The Handbook contains all you need to know on the:
We also highly recommend a RACP webinar Simplifying CPD for private practitioners, available on RACP’s Medflix platform. This webinar features private practitioners and provides an overview of the CPD requirements and shares practical examples relating to Category 2 and Category 3 CPD requirements.
As CPD is self-directed, you can choose the types of activities to undertake that fall within the allocated categories.
Below are a range of activities that you may already be completing or may be interested in, that fall within Categories 2 and 3. Feel free to use any of these examples and tailor them to meet your scope of practice.
Category 2: Reviewing Performance
The good news for private practitioners finding Category 2 CPD requirements challenging, is that undertaking and maintaining the 2 mandatory CPD activities; Professional Development Plan (PDP) and Annual Conversation, will, in general, accrue enough hours to meet the minimum requirement (5 hours) for Category 2 CPD.
We acknowledge there are challenges for private practitioners in conducting peer reviews while juggling a demanding private practice, which often consumes a substantial portion of non-clinical time. As the CPD requirements are designed to encourage interaction and engagement amongst peers there are several ways private practitioners can undertake these activities.
Your PDP
Creating and maintaining a personal professional development plan is a mandatory activity. Your PDP is particularly beneficial for reflecting on your past practice, identifying possible gaps in knowledge and skills and planning how to address those in the coming year.
The following may be useful when developing your PDP:
Schedule and record your Annual Conversation
- Your Annual Conversation is designed to offer a structured conversation with a peer or colleague (or employer if relevant) about your practice. It is intended to provide time to reflect on your development needs, goals for learning and professional activities and your intentions for the year.
The following may be useful when scheduling your Annual Conversation:
Other activities that private practitioners may find beneficial to their scope of practice include:
- Self-care plan: Creating and maintaining a self-care plan is an important part of physician self-care and wellbeing and is acknowledged as invaluable to CPD.
- Peer review: Case discussions and some handover meetings are forms of peer review. Many private practitioners will undertake these activities in their day-to-day practice, which can be recorded as Category 2 activities. To keep records for CPD, this generic peer review log may be useful.
- Multisource Feedback (MSF): MSF is an untapped source for private practitioners. This includes collecting feedback from peers, medical colleagues, co-workers, patients, other health practitioners and consists of a four-stage process.
- RACP Supervisor Professional Development: Completing or facilitating the Supervisor Professional Development Program (SPDP) will allow you to accrue Category 2 hours.
- Digital health activities: Have you considered undertaking digital health activities that count towards all 3 Categories (1–3)? You can find more information about the activities that can be taken—along with examples—at RACP’s Digital Health CPD Primer.
This collection has been peer‑reviewed by Fellows of the RACP to help you find high‑quality CPD resources on digital health.
- Paper trails and emails: On average, a person receives approximately 100 emails per day, with 99% of us checking emails daily. Of this, most emails sent and received are for the purpose of work. During day-to-day practice, private practitioners are likely to communicate via email with colleagues on a regular basis. Email can also be a tool for reaching your CPD hours. One option can be using this tool to keep a record of meetings or discussions by emailing colleagues with a summary of following, as a paper trail. More than the content itself, the focus for these meetings should be more on the reflections and learnings that result from the feedback from your peers, co-workers and patients that will formally or informally critically appraise, assess and monitor your actual work and processes. These emails can be sent to colleagues in the individual scope of practice and don’t need to be fellow specialists.
- Journal article peer review: Many practitioners keep abreast of latest research and in-depth knowledge of their area of practice through journal articles. Some also undertake journal article peer reviews, which are also a verified CPD activity. These must be journal articles that have been submitted for review and publication.
Category 3: Measuring Outcomes
Working towards Category 3 points involves activities that enhance the quality of your practice and ensure patient outcomes meet established standards.
Many private practitioners are surprised to learn that they may already be engaged in measuring outcomes (Category 3) activities within their own practice.
Some of the more common activities that fall within this category include mortality and morbidity reviews/meetings; clinicopathological correlation meetings or analysis and reflection on health outcomes data as part of research related activities.
Other activities that those working in private practice may find useful in meeting their Category 3 requirements.
- Audit your clinic letters: Auditing clinic letters is a strong Category 3 activity. We recommend using the
SAIL (Sheffield Assessment Instrument for Letters). Select several letters at random to review.
Find templates and resources in the RACP MyCPD Handbook.
- Practice audits: Compare actual practice against established standards. An audit includes:
- Evaluation of the care you provide
- A quality improvement process
See Clinical and Non‑Clinical Audit and Peer Review Ideas for audit templates, including non‑clinical audits (e.g., cultural safety and addressing health inequity, mental health, readability, teaching, workload audits).
- Self‑audits: Use the RACP audit template (attached/available via Handbook) to audit an area of your practice.
You can also audit a sample of your recent reports (e.g., worker or workplace assessments; investigations of environmental/workplace risk) or self‑audit against the Evolve Top 5 Recommendations.
- Review medication prescriptions against relevant standards.
- Analysis and reflection on health outcomes data as part of research‑related activities.
- Incident reporting or monitoring (e.g., mortality and morbidity reviews).
- Measure the outcomes of any digital health activities undertaken in your practice or role.
- Formal research involving analysis of health outcomes data.
Embedding cultural safety, health inequities, ethics & professional behaviour in your CPD
CPD participants are required to incorporate addressing and embedding cultural safety, which incorporates addressing health inequities, and ethics and professional behaviour in their CPD activities.
Participants are required to complete and record a minimum of two activities on cultural safety including addressing health inequities, and two activities on ethics and professional behaviour annually.
Activities undertaken to meet these mandatory requirements can be completed and recorded under Categories 1, 2 or 3. Some examples of this include (but are not limited to):
- Participate in workshops, courses, conferences, or complete readings on cultural safety (Category 1).
- Discuss ethical challenges and receive feedback from colleagues or mentors (Category 3).
- Listen to Pomegranate Health podcast episodes on ethics or professionalism (Category 1).
- Integrate cultural safety‑focused activities into your PDP or Annual Conversation by reflecting on practice and addressing biases or power dynamics (Category 2).
Further information:
- Cultural safety and health inequities
- Ethics and professional behaviour
Get the most out of your RACP CPD
There are many ways as a private practitioner to get the most out of RACP CPD. Our CPD framework has been designed for physicians, by physicians.
RACP CPD participants can accrue verified CPD hours with RACP through the following:
- Be part of the College
- Join a College Committee or governance group to connect with community and accrue Category 1 hours, automatically uploaded to your RACP MyCPD record.
- Supervising trainees or medical/PhD studies; examining trainees or medical studies; assessing/marking advanced training projects are eligible for Category 2 CPD hours (verified by RACP).
- Events
- Attend a RACP event virtually or in‑person to connect with peers and build networks—potentially creating a peer review network for Categories 1 and 2. Some events also offer opportunities to accrue Category 3 activities. Keep an eye out for those.
- RACP Online Learning
- Make the most of the College’s online resources on the RACP Online Learning platform. This platform offers a range of content including self-paced courses, educational video libraries, valuable content on cultural safety, or search CPD category-specific content for your area of practice in The Resourceful Physician.
- Pomegranate Health:
- Listening to the RACP’s Pomegranate Health podcast can accrue Category 1 hours. Pomegranate Health is a podcast about the culture of medicine. You'll hear insights from clinicians, researchers, and advocates as they tackle important questions, like how to make difficult clinical and ethical decisions without being influenced by bias, how to communicate better with patients and colleagues, and how to provide healthcare that’s both efficient and fair.
Tools and resources at your fingertips
Take advantage of the vast range of CPD-related resources available through the RACP MyCPD Handbook and on RACP Online Learning. We’ve listed a few here to get you started:
- Explainer videos and podcasts: This page contains media including video and audio content that will support you in understanding the CPD requirements and completing your CPD activities.
- Tools and templates: This page is a hub of useful tools and templates to support you in completing CPD activities across Categories 2 and 3.
- Online resources library
- Article with examples: Clinical audit and peer review ideas
- Article: Clinical and Non-Clinical Audit and Peer Review Ideas
- Video: Decoding CPD (Categories 2 and 3) with A/Prof Clair Sullivan
- Video: Using practice data to target education and learning video with Professor Tim Shaw
View more acceptable activities for your CPD.
Hot tips
- Hot tip #1: Aspects of your Category 1 activities may involve performance review and/or components that measure outcomes, which can be claimed under Categories 2 or 3 (e.g., presentations, research, teaching, supervision, publications). If you’re unsure, reach out to our CPD Team.
- Hot tip #2: Private practice is busy—the last thing you want in December is bulk data entry. Upload activities to your RACP MyCPD record as you go to avoid lengthy, stressful sessions later.
- Hot tip #3: When recording activities, use other activities that involve reviewing performance or other activities that involve measuring outcomes for anything not otherwise available within the platform, especially for private practice activities.
Reach out, we’re here to help
We know CPD is a regulatory requirement and something you “just need to do.” You don’t have to do it alone. Our CPD Team can provide guidance and support whenever you need it. We can provide advice on activities that may be practicable within your scope of practice or walk you through how to add an activity to your RACP MyCPD record.
Book a support call