The place of portfolios within continuing professional development

This is the first in a series of articles looking at a possible model of continuing professional development (CPD) as suggested at a recent conference on professional development held at the University of East Anglia. This article puts CPD into the framework of legislative changes affecting the professions supplementary to medicine and explores how CPD might be taken forward by health-care professionals as a processbased activity which ensures that therapists are not only taking responsibility for identifying their own learning needs but also providing evidence that CPD is taking place. Subsequent articles will discuss particular ‘tools’ for CPD to which this article will allude.