CPD everything

With the country navigating some stormy political waters, we find ourselves in the unusual situation where the NHS isn’t at the top of the political agenda at this minute. However, this is likely to be short-lived, with a general election looming around the corner.

The financial position of the service remains tight, even with NHS long-term plan investment. It remains to be seen how issues such as capital can be resolved, but our technical team are working hard internally on your behalf to feed in where there are concerns or potential solutions.

As I mentioned last month, the HFMA autumn programme is hotting up. We had three branch events in September and in October there are four more as we host the Eastern, Kent/Surrey/Sussex, London and Scotland branch events. We are really touching the four corners of the UK with our programme and our president Bill Gregory is putting in a shift for us – for which we are grateful. I’m also very grateful for the volunteer support from our members.  Without our membership we would be nothing.

His theme of Value the opportunity has struck a chord with members. And the association has itself taken the value message to heart by working to ensure development opportunities are properly recognised. We are slowly rolling out a ‘CPD everything’ strategy across the HFMA’s entire range of products. 

We started with all our e-learning and moved to events – all these are now accredited with the CPD Standards Office. We are aiming to gain accreditation for reading policy papers and even this magazine, making it easier for you to demonstrate compliance with your annual continuing professional development requirements. 

Of course, it’s not about box-ticking; the training you receive should reflect your professional needs and be planned as part of a development programme through the year.  But it helps to be able to record your activities accurately. Our CPD scheme is backed by an independent CPD assessment service, so you have the assurance that it is independently verified.  I hope that in future years we can add reading content to some events, allowing you to be able to double-up on some events.

At the time of writing, our awards programme was just closing. These will be announced at our gala dinner on the Thursday of our annual conference. Due to the shape of the venue, it’s sometimes been hard to get everyone’s attention after dinner, when naturally people want to chat. So, in a change this coming year, we will be holding the awards ceremony before dinner.

We are pulling together the final programme for the conference and it looks good so far. I encourage all members to attend on Friday morning to hear next year’s president Caroline Clarke launching the HFMA’s 70th anniversary year. It will also be an opportunity to hear about some of the exciting plans the association has at the annual general meeting.