Continuing professional development (CPD) is the way health professionals continue to learn and develop throughout their careers following their initial entry into the profession, so they keep their skills and knowledge up to date. There are many ways of providing or obtaining CPD, as are there many regulatory authorities throughout the world that requires documentation of CPD activities.

Podiatry Arena has implemented a system of CPD points that can be converted into a certificate to present to these regulatory authorities that accept it as evidence of your learning activities here.

The CPD Points earned here are automated and are the result of an algorithm that weights and gives points for different activities. The weighting given to different activities are being monitored and tweaked over time.

Where do you find your CPD Points:
The totals can be found in two places: the welcome panel at the top right of each page when you are logged on and in your User CP (control panel) & My Account (in the top navigation bar)

The following activities at Podiatry Arena earn points:
* Registering as a member (this is so that no one starts with a zero)
* Recruiting new members (your user name will need to be entered in the 'Referer' box when the new member first registers for this to be credited; the more members we have, the more people that can contribute to the CPD of the community; the number of referals you got will appear in your user profile, if your username was specified when the new member joins.)
* Logging on and reading messages (this takes into account the time that you are active when logged on)
* Starting a new thread (the creator of threads gets points for starting the thread and for the number of replies and number of views. More points are earned if you start interesting threads; ie you are contributing to others CPD; to prevent abuse, if we delete a frivilous thread because its not considered important enough, you lose double the points earned for that thread)
* Posting replies in threads (to prevent abuse, we can tag posts that do not add value to the thread and no points are earned for it; alternatively if we delete frivilous posts as they are of no value, you lose double the points that was gained for that post)
* Completing the fields in your profile (this helps tell the community more about you; if you are logged on you can edit your profile here)

How often are points updated:
Some happen instantly and others tick over at midnight, so they are always up-to-date tomorrow :)

Obtaining you Podiatry Arena CPD Certificate: