Review: Enhanced CPD Pro

Recently I stumbled across this app and website whilst finding a way to organise my Continuous Professional Development (CPD). For those in the UK, the General Dental Council (GDC) have recently swapped to an ‘Enhanced CPD’ scheme which has multiple requirements to fulfil the CPD criteria – some of which include having a personal development plan (PDP) and reflecting on all CPD activities. Personally, I find it difficult to keep track of everything and keep things organised – enter Enhanced CPD Pro!

The Good

This website is brilliant and takes care of everything from creating your PDP and ‘tasks to complete’ all the way to uploading your CPD and creating reflections. From the moment you login and enter your GDC number, the website automatically populates your CPD cycle and requirements based on your job role.

When you create your PDP, you can control all aspects of each goal with the topics it relates to and the reasons you are creating the goal. The PDP also comes pre-populated with GDC and CQC required and suggested CPD, along with the hours required. You can link all your goals to the new CPD A-D domains as well, helping fulfil enhanced CPD criteria.

When recording your CPD, you can populate virtually all the information you could think of! You have options to link to existing PDP goals and the specialities your CPD links to – or you can let Enhanced CPD Pro automatically detect this! As you complete a CPD record, you will be shown the progress of that record and to ensure you have completed it properly, it will not count to your total CPD hours until 100% is achieved. It even remembers your preferred choices and has pre-existing lists e.g. of CPD venues or CPD providers.

You have a ‘Health Check’ homepage that allows you to track your overall CPD cycle progress, as well as progress for each PDP goal and the GDC requirements. These allow you to target your CPD more appropriately. You can also then download your entire PDP and CPD log in one large PDF document if you wish to keep a hard copy. All your CPD certificates can also be uploaded to be easily accessed.

Enhanced CPD Pro can be accessed via the website but also has both iOS and Android apps, allowing you to record your CPD anywhere. Additionally, the website offers its own CPD which you can access and will automatically populate your record once complete.

The Bad

To be honest, there aren’t many negatives on this website. I would truly be knit-picking to find some. Some aspects of the website are a little confusing and non-standardised. Any list that is produced (for example, lists of dental topics for CPD) gets randomly rearranged every time you access them. In addition, I have been trying to add information about my workplace and environment so it appears on my log – but I have, so far, been unable to do so! Though the website does provide core CPD, the quality of some of this CPD is questionable. There are many grammatical errors and some factual errors so their courses should be treated with caution.

Price

You can do a 30-day free trial – which is what I tried like with many of these things. However, I liked it so much that I ended up subscribing immediately! The price of a subscription varies depending on your job, but a dentist pays £4.99 (+VAT) and this includes 20h of verifiable CPD/year to meet the GDC requirements – directly on their website! This is probably much cheaper than other alternative CPD providers for the same resources!

Summary

Enhanced CPD Pro is an extremely simple and intuitive way to record and maintain your CPD log. If it isn’t already clear – I am truly impressed by this website. It seems to tick all the requirements that the GDC have and therefore will help prevent you from being caught off guard. Though the provided CPD may not be of the highest quality, it is priced very reasonably compared to existing competitors and with an associated iOS and Android app, it truly is a complete CPD solution!