HCPC Audit Survival Guide: What Psychologists Need to Know

Dr Marianne Trent (: 00:00

Continuing professional development. We all know we should be doing it, but what happens when the HCPC actually checks? Today we are giving you the lowdown, the real truth on CPD audits and what to expect. Hope you find it so useful. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. I am Dr. Marianne, a qualified clinical psychologist. Now, when it comes to continuing professional development, we ought to be keeping records or all stages of our career because it can be really useful at times of appraisal when you need to review your performance or perhaps even feed into reviewing somebody else's performance as well. But once we advance to becoming qualified, it means that in order to keep up our HCPC registration that we need to be logging and potentially able to evidence the continuing professional development, the CPD that we are doing. This is not something we've covered in the podcast yet, and I do think that everybody at every stage of their career working towards a regulated profession will find this a really eyeopening episode. I do hope that's the case. If you do find it helpful, please do drop me a me a comment and subscribe to the channel wherever you get your podcasts for more. Thank you so much, and I'll see you on the other side. Hi, I just want to welcome along our guest for today, Dr. Carly Pointon. Hi Carly.

Dr Carly Pointon (: 01:32

Hi Marianne. Nice to see you.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 01:34

Lovely to see you too. And thank you so much for coming and speaking to our audience about this very important topic. I know it's been a bit stressful at times for you too.

Dr Carly Pointon (: 01:45

Yeah, absolutely. And unexpected, but I knew it would come at some point.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 01:52

Yeah. So tell us then, for those who, we've got people listening to this podcast or watching this on YouTube, but all different stages of their career. So some may already know what an H-C-P-C-C-P-D audit is, others may not. Could you give us a little bit of an overview about that please, Carly?

Dr Carly Pointon (: 02:10

Absolutely. Yeah. So every couple of years when registration comes around the HCPC, choose, I think it's 2.5% of the registrants to randomly select 2.5% of them to audit. And that involves choosing registrants to look at their continuing professional development. So you have to provide evidence of what you've been doing over a two year period. And obviously we'll go into a little bit more detail as we talk, but essentially you have to show two years of records and you have to do a little bit more of a deep dive on four to six pieces of CPD from those two years, provide that back to the HCPC within a certain timeframe, three months in a particular style of evidence and written reflection as well of a sort of chronological record around the work that you do. And it has to be against the standards that the HCPC expect to see. So it's something that you know have to do and you should be keeping records, but when you get asked to do it, it can be quite a daunting experience because whilst we all develop, as we go through our work, we don't necessarily reflect on it in the depth that the A CPC need to see to ensure that you are continuing to develop and you are doing that for your benefit and the benefit of the clients that you work with.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 03:36

Okay, yeah, this does sound quite involved. I'm yet to be called, but I understand that when we get that call to re-register and you've got to do that within a set window, otherwise you get unregistered. So for anyone who is already HCPC regulated lookout for that email, I don't think they send you a letter anymore. It's literally like an email. You've got to catch it and you've got to do it within a certain timeframe. So you log into your HCPC login portal, and is it at that stage that you realise you've been one of the lucky 2.5%?

Dr Carly Pointon (: 04:11

So yeah, so what happened with me was I noticed that probably like yourself, so I'm part of quite a few Facebook groups, one of them being the UK psychologist in private practise group. And somebody had mentioned that they had been chosen and they said that on the breakdown of registration, the registration page, that their audit section was in red. So they hadn't received an email to say that they were going to be audited, but their section was just in red, so they assumed they might be, whereas a couple of other people have commented underneath and said, no, I have received an email asking me to do the audit. So this alarm bell went off in my head, I've been qualified nearly 11 years, and I thought, even though it's supposed to be random, I just thought, oh, I just feel like fate might be, it might be my turn.

(: 05:02

So I logged on to register and the section was in red, but I haven't received an email either. And then lo and behold, a few days later I did receive the email. So lots of people had the same sort of thing had happened for them. And funny enough, I supervised somebody in New Zealand and she was a trainee of mine a good few years ago, and she had been asked to do her CPD in New Zealand at the same time. And just as a funny fact in New Zealand, you can't reregister until you've given your CPD in. So actually for all the psychologists that live over here in the uk, we've actually got a better deal. We can register reregister and stay registered while we do our CPD, whereas in New Zealand, you have to put your registration in and then you get your registration back. So we actually have a slightly better deal. So it takes the pressure off, so you can go on the register, you can put your registration in, and then you put your CPD in by the end of May. So the pressure, it's slightly less pressurised to be honest, Marianne, than I thought it was going to be for that purpose.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 06:09

Yeah, because obviously when we're in private practise and if you haven't got your registration, you potentially can't work, you can't earn any money. So I'm very glad for the UK system in that regard. This might sound like a silly question, but what counts as CPD for a qualified psychologist?

Dr Carly Pointon (: 06:28

So it's quite broad and varied. I mean, I did know, I knew that things like reading journals, going to conferences, attending formal training courses, those things are obvious. Those are the things that spring to mind. And when you support assistant psychologists and trainees and your peers, if you're a line manager as well, those things are obvious, aren't they? If you've supervised and managed people over time, if you are newly qualified and perhaps you're starting out new career, maybe some of the more subtle things might not be as obvious. Things like developing a new presentation or a training course, going through your personal development plan with your line manager or going to a reflective practise session and talking things through with your peers and being able to write that up. Those things might not seem as obvious when I went through my two years and obviously going to clinical supervision, actually those discussions that you have are continuous professional development.

(: 07:31

I think people jump to the first most obvious thing like attending a course and think that you've got to have a big long list of courses that you've attended. And actually it isn't. And what the HCPC do is they give you the categories of educational type work, CPD, that you can provide formal, informal, indirect and type of CPD, but also voluntary work that you can do things that will help to support to show that you are growing in your role, but also what benefits you and what benefits in the HCP C, they talk about service users. So not everybody uses service user that term in their work, but service user can be both clients and patients, et cetera. But also it can mean the staff that you work with. So if for example, you've done a course or read an article or done some reflection that benefits your staff team, then that can then and actually count as CPD as well. So there's a whole range of things that you can do that all count CPD.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 08:37

Okay. So it's very diverse and actually it's not always things that need to have formal CPD points. This can be listening to podcast episodes and reading books and things that might not have that CPT accreditation per se.

Dr Carly Pointon (: 08:53

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I took up a piece of work. Mine were quite broad and varied. So I did attend a conference with lots of peers and some senior colleagues and was lucky to listen to a talk by Francesca happy about autism girls. But then on the other end of scale, I'd done some reading around grief and I feel a bit silly now, the name drop, but I'd read the Grief Collective and things like that absolutely had before I knew I was going to be recording this. Obviously it was last year, but it was a new piece of work for me. So I'd gone to people that psychologists that I knew and I had gone through charities that deal with adolescents that have lost relatives to support me with that piece of work because it was a one-to-one young person that I was working with. And I obviously did a lot of reading around that because it was the first time that I'd worked with a young person who'd lost relatives very close relative during the work that I was completing. And so I used that as evidence of CPD and also the feedback that I received from the family that as evidence of C-P-D-C-P-D for my reflection afterwards when the work came to an end. So those were two parts of that reflection as evident, and that was part of what I submitted when I put the evidence in.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 10:17

Okay. So that's so important. You can use feedback to demonstrate that you are professionally developed and competent. That's really interesting to know, and I didn't know that you'd read the Grief Collective, but I hope that was really helpful in you getting on board with different people's experience of grief actually and how it plays out for people for different griefs across their lives. So I'm really heartened to hear that you've read that. Thank you.

Dr Carly Pointon (: 10:47

You're welcome. And I actually, I had forgotten that I'd put that in and when you asked me about this, and it's funny isn't it, that you forget the things that you and you do forget the things that you've done. And I think that's a really, really good point. I have become a bit of a pain to the assistants and the new trainee that I've just started supervising because recording things is really important, but I was absolutely so grateful. It sounds really strange to LinkedIn as a system because where I had forgotten some of the things that I'd done had not done records as probably as detailed as I should have done for the last couple of years because I've had a really busy time. I went back through my LinkedIn profile and what that actually captured was more personal reflections on days that things that I'd done a more personal photographs for example.

(: 11:44

So I used social media where I'd shared things and actually I could see things and how I'd felt on the day about those experiences that I've had days that I'd been to conferences that I'd been to. So I had my professional records, I had my diary and I had receipts of conferences that I'd been to and I had my CPD record of this was when I did supervision and these were my supervision records, but actually I found that my LinkedIn record also said, oh, this is where I went on this day and this is how I felt about it and this is how excited I was. So that enabled me to do the reflective pieces for those four to six actual CPD that you need to write reflective pieces on where you need the much deeper evidence of. So that's what I've been sound to the people that I supervise at the moment is it's the reflective pieces that you have to go to turn on.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 12:34

Okay. So yeah, you are almost having to go forensic accounting on your own life and I'm guessing they give you the two year window. Are they that you need to span?

Dr Carly Pointon (: 12:45

Yes. So I mean I chose to spread mine out, but they weren't specific about that. To be fair, they didn't say that it has to be across the two years. There's a webinar that you can attend. They'd offered that back in March and that cancer CPD as well, the webinar itself, and if you can't go to the scheduled one, it's recorded and you can watch that back and it was really, really good. So I'm quite a visual learner. I don't like to be given a great big document and just wade through that myself. There's a lot of help on the website, but I actually found it really useful to sit and watch the video and the lady that talks you through that, it's really straightforward and she explained things really well and she puts the slides up and she talks through what the expectations are, this is what the assessors will be looking for, and I found that useful and I would recommend that anybody who finds themselves in this position does that first don't start writing and then do it after a month, do it at the beginning and look at the examples. So there are examples on the website of your peers that have of a early career, medium, midterm, mid seniority senior for psychologists, and they recommend looking at other types of professions as well if you've got the time. And that was really useful I found for layouts to see how the people have represented themselves in their CPD records.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 14:14

Okay. So that's good to know. You're not on your own, you're not just kind of flung under the bus and get on with it. There is support around that is really useful to know. The way that I keep a log of my CPD is I use my, because I'm in private practise, I use my clinical notes software, which is called writeup, and I add a patient in called continuous professional development and I try to add notes and use the calendar function of that to add that. But definitely speaking to you is going to make me more mindful about perhaps adding a bit more of a reflection in rather than just a date and a thing. Because actually I hadn't realised that I might need to go deeper on this for specific things. I thought I was literally just ticking off what I'd done.

Dr Carly Pointon (: 15:03

Yeah. So over the last year I did a course which was about building a career. It was a year long course, actually, it's one of my examples. And within that course, the lady that ran the course, she encourages you to look at achievements and to record those. So I've used one of her spreadsheets recently is also an online system and the name of it Escape, but I know talking about it quite a lot, even the UK private psychologist page and perhaps where you can ensure that we could give that to your listeners the name of the online online recording system. What I did was the spreadsheet that I set up, rather than it just having the recording on, I used to just keep mine as a list. I hadn't thought about using writeup. Actually I've only been using writeup for about six months, but the spreadsheet that I use now has different tab across the bottom.

(: 16:01

So it has one for my achievements that I've just almost a snapshot of achievements that things that I feel that are stick with the categories that the CPD at the HP request for feedback. So if I do get an email or I do have a piece of feedback just said to me, I call that and one for the record so it has the record on, I can connect them together because it was the practical aspect, collating the evidence, making sure that it was in the right format, et cetera. For the HCPC, the week ago I submitted, I calculated that I spent 30 hours in the week before I submitted on admin formatting and tweaking the document that I sent in. So that wasn't even the hours in the month before on actually getting it. So I didn't calculate the hosts that was on making sure I put things in or making sure that I picked right and redacting.

(: 17:02

So you have to make sure things aren't identifiable obviously and that they're anonymous. And for those of people that are working full time, obviously you've got to find the extra time, but those that work in private practise hours is a lot of time. And when you've got families, et cetera, and if you haven't got families it's 30 hours, it's still a lot of time in an extra week. I had a really a couple days before I submitted just sitting there making sure it was right. And the other thing that the lady did say who did the webinar was that if the assess can't make sense to evidence, you have to connect things together and they have to go in on separate documents. You can't just upload them all in one. So if they connect things together, it's really tricky for them to understand which document links to the other. So I was wanting to be really sure that it's clear.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 17:52

Yeah, okay. And that was going to be my next question really how many hours this taken? But you've beautifully answered that within your answer anyway. And for me in private practise that's 30 hours of unpaid work. I guess it's factoring that in. And do you think with hindsight you could have done your regular recordings better to speed that up or do you think it's always going to be a very involved process? Carly,

Dr Carly Pointon (: 18:17

I think senior leader historically, so I did five years as a senior leader run really large teams. And I think that as you, we work your way up the ladder, you can become slightly more, I think you know that you achieve your CPD through development because you are doing personal development plans course as you go to conferences, as a psychologist, you are training and ensuring other people are receiving their ccpd and you're ticking off with the line manager and know as a psychologist, incredibly important. I think we are very good at knowing we have to train and develop, I mean keep a list, we attend our supervision because it's strummed into us in training that is, and especially reflective practise, I think we know it's there, but to show that as evidence to show it to the right level, particularly the part around standards. So the standards state that there should be a continuous record, that it should show a variety of evidence and three and four cover, it should benefit the service users and it should benefit us our quality of practise.

(: 19:31

And I think that is a bit that's more tricky because got to write a way that it's synced but still is at a high enough quality to show how we've reflected. And I think that's the bit where I wanted to choose the right evidence. So I had to do all make sure all of my records were adequate enough to demonstrate my skills and abilities from the last two years and then choose ones to write about. So it did change my mind probably about six times to understand which ones to write about. And that was the bit that took the time, Marianne, to be honest. So I wrote a cockle and then discarded them. And I dunno if that's because I'm a psychologist and I was procrastinating about getting it right or whether it was because I am the sort of person that thinks like an assessor because obviously I've worked with for years, I've worked and other people.

(: 20:28

So I helped trainees to get on courses, helped them with their development. I've been a trainer myself, I read a lot of comments on Facebook from people saying, don't overthink it because they'd done theirs quite simplistically and still past. So I did in the end, I was quite strict to myself and thought it can be good enough because the one thing I wanted to say to your listeners today was that the lady who ran the talk said that if the assessors aren't happy, they will come back to you and they will talk it through with you and they'll say, this is what's missing and here is your second dance. And so please don't worry that you are just going to be suddenly struck off the register if there's something missing. And that was really reassuring and it's not, she wasn't giving people the free reign just to hand any, I think we've got to take it seriously. It's seriously the audit. But she was very clear that if for some reason we haven't quite hit the mark, there is a second and she intimated a third opportunity here to get it right if we haven't quite understood the process. So when I got to the sort of my third and fourth piece is I was thinking, is this the right one? Is this the right one? And so I thought don't overthink it, put in, and if that evidence, I've got some in the bag to hand them if I haven't got it quite

Dr Marianne Trent (: 21:57

Okay. That really is reassuring to know that it's not a first strike and out situation. Do you have a sense of the people that are reviewing what you submit, are they fellow HCPC registered professionals? Are they trained administrators? Who is it that's determining whether we are enough?

Dr Carly Pointon (: 22:17

So we were reassured that at least one of the assessors would be of the same profession as us, which I thought I actually, I hadn't expected that answer. I think it was in the q and a actually at the end of that. I think somebody asked that if my memory serves me correctly, but it was definitely stated and I wasn't precious about who it was, but I thought that was actually really interesting and useful to know because as I was writing, I'm quite a plain speaking person, but actually as I was writing, I was thinking I reduced down because you have word limits, which is good. I think that dependency to write far too much and I had to reduce down some of my explanations and I felt like I was missing a couple of things out, but I asked it to limit and thought, right, I've missed this out because of the word limit, but hopefully somebody is reading it within the professional understand with these emissions, what I mean here.

(: 23:17

So I felt reassured by that. Absolutely. And also the timescale. I just thought once it's gone in, you've just got, because it does say on the email it might take eight to 12 weeks to come back to you, which is a lot bone. It is. But I think people have been hearing back with it around about the month, but I think those people had handed it in early. So I do wonder if the eight to 12 weeks is closer to the submission date. I handed mine in a little bit early, but not massively. So I'm kind of thinking it's in, I forget about it now and just wait and see,

Dr Marianne Trent (: 23:56

Wait and see and do keep us posted and we can give a little update to people. We have another, there's a little two part special on HCPC actually, and this is the second of those episodes. We've also had a chat with Nick who's a legal supporter who helped people navigate the HCPC complaints process. So if anyone watching or listening to this is like, oh, that would be an interesting watch or listen, please do look out for that one as well. Carly, this has been so eyeopening and if you could offer one piece of advice to someone, what would it be?

Dr Carly Pointon (: 24:35

Actually, and I didn't mention, I talked mine through with my supervisor, so I'm lucky to be supervised by Professor Helen Dent. She's been a colleague and a peer for many years. I've met Helen during my clinical training. And I think the benefits of speaking to someone who knows you well and also knows your work is you can be very honest and open with them about both your feelings about the process because nobody has the time to suddenly just drop everything and add something in that takes so much time with the 30 hours around all the add in and the flat thing and the agonised. But it was also the early weeks of putting the information writing about that, but talking to your clinical supervisor about it was really, really useful. And Helen herself had been through it as well, so she gave absolute words of wisdom. Helen's retired now, so she's been there and done that. And I found that really, really helpful. And also just being honest with people that I was worried nervous, even though I kind of knew what I needed to do, just being sharing with peers. I put a funny post on when I'd finished. I just seen people's comments underneath, made me laugh and made me realise that other people were in the same position and that made me feel better. So I didn't feel alone, which was really important.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 26:00

Really important. And it's also led us to talking together today as well. I thought that's something we've not spoken about for the podcast. It'll be so useful for everybody whatever stage of their career they're at. Do you have a sense of whether lightning construct twice. So I very much hope that you'll get the green tick and everything will go forward. Okay. Are you put back into the same pool of a hundred percent next year or next registration time or do you get a little few years out?

Dr Carly Pointon (: 26:29

Apparently not apparently everybody. Yeah, everyone can absolutely be chosen again. So I have heard from a few people here and there that were picked up in two years time again. So yes, I guess that is the whole definition of the word random that we have.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 26:49

Yeah, indeed. So not like the Hunger Games where if you survive the Hunger Games, you don't get reaped again. You could get called again in two years, but hopefully it will be a smoother process because you'll know exactly what the expectations are. But I hope that anyone who's listened or watched this episode will find it a smoother process because hopefully it will really help them to think about what they need to be recording. Perhaps they keep a CPD log so that they can easily go to the kind of things, like I said, I use writeup. I know that Dr. Deborah Kingston recommends a spreadsheet that you, it is kind of spreadsheet, but I think you pay a monthly fee for that. So I will get the details of that. But if anyone wants to get a bit of a demo about how writeup works and how I use that for my CPT and how I use that for my clients, obviously I won't show you my client identifiable data. Please do let me know. Carly, thank you so much for your time. Like I said, please do keep us posted with the outcome of your audit and thanks for being so willing to share your knowledge, skills, and expertise with our audience. If people want to know more about you, where's the best place for them to head to?

Dr Carly Pointon (: 27:59

So my practise point in psychology is on LinkedIn on there under Dr. Carly Poin, and I do have a Facebook page as well, which is point in Psychology.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 28:09

Amazing. I will make sure that those links are on screen and they are in the description and show notes as well. Thank you so much for your time and I will look forward to catching up with you at some point in the future.

Dr Carly Pointon (: 28:21

You're welcome. Lovely speaking to you. Take care.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 28:23

Thank you. What a super useful episode that was and a lovely chat with Carly. We did have some sound and connection issues at times, but I'm very much hoping that ultimately the uploaded episode has done the trick and that it was possible to work out everything we were saying at the right time. If you found this episode helpful, please do drop me a like, please do drop me a comment. Please do engage with one another in the comments on YouTube as well. Let's support each other. Let's raise people up. Let's really make this a wonderful community to be part of. Carly mentioned my book, the Grief Collective Stories of Life Loss and Learning to Heal in the episode. And if you would like to get a hold of that, you can click the link in my bio or in the description or on the show notes.

(: 29:09

But there's a really nice way of learning about grief, especially if you don't have that personal resonance with grief yourself as well. I was talking to some journalist today about grief and trauma. Grief is around us all the time and having an awareness of it can be so important so that we are better able to understand ourselves, our friends, our family, and our clients. So please do check that out. I also mentioned writeup in there. If welcome a free two week trial to check writeup out yourself, please do check the link in the description or contact me by sending me a DM and we can sort you out at not just the free two week trial, but a demo with me and I can show you how I record my CPD, but also how I use it to organise my clinic and make it run so much more smoothly.

(: 30:02

The kindest thing you can do for any podcaster that you rate is to subscribe or follow their show, so please do that for me. If you do enjoy the content that I create and the guests that I bring on, the more engagement we get, the better and better guests we get to. If you are an aspiring psych, please do come and join my free Facebook group, the Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr. Marianne Trent. If it's your time and you're ready for the next step in your career, please do consider the Aspiring Psychologist membership and for that more bespoke touch, the Ready to Rise programme, which I'm very excited about, and having some lovely one-to-one sessions with people for two,

Jingle Guy (: 30:43

If you're looking to become a psychologist.