How to meet your CPD requirements as an Australian nurse or midwife

Continuing Professional Development, or CPD, is a requirement the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia places on every registered nurse and midwife. It is not a box-ticking exercise. Done well, it keeps your practice current, supports your registration renewal, and gives you a structured way to grow across a career that rarely stands still. This guide explains the rules in plain terms and shows how to stay on top of your hours without a last-minute scramble.

What AHPRA requires

Registered nurses and midwives must complete at least 20 hours of CPD each registration year, which runs from 1 June to 31 May. The Board's Registration Standard for CPD sets out the minimum, and the hours must be relevant to your context of practice. At renewal you are asked to declare that you have met the requirement, and you must keep evidence of your CPD activities for at least five years in case you are audited. Enrolled nurses have their own requirement, also 20 hours, and some endorsements such as scheduled medicines add further hours on top of the base.

What counts as CPD

CPD is broader than attending a formal course. The Board recognises a wide range of activities provided they are relevant to your practice and you can show what you learned. Common examples include postgraduate study, in-service education, conferences, workshops, online learning modules, journal reading with reflection, clinical supervision, and structured peer review. The key is that each activity has a clear learning outcome and some record of what you took from it. Passive attendance with no reflection is harder to defend at audit than an activity you can describe and connect to your work.

Keeping a record that holds up at audit

A defensible CPD record usually includes the date of the activity, a short title or description, the number of hours, the type of activity, and a brief reflection on how it relates to your practice. Certificates of completion are the most common supporting evidence, but they are not the only form. Notes from a journal club, a summary of a self-directed learning module, or minutes from a clinical supervision session can all count if they show the learning and the time spent. The discipline that matters most is logging activities as you do them, because reconstructing a year of CPD from memory at renewal time is where most nurses come unstuck.

Making CPD part of your working fortnight

The simplest way to stay current is to spread your hours across the registration year rather than cramming them into May. An hour or two each fortnight adds up comfortably past 20 hours and leaves room for the activities that genuinely interest you rather than whatever is left. Rostera was built with this rhythm in mind: you log training hours as you complete them, upload certificates against each entry, and the app tracks your running total against your yearly target so you always know where you stand. When renewal opens, your record is already there, ready to declare.

This guide is general information only and does not constitute professional advice. Always refer to the current Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia standards and your own registration details for the requirements that apply to you.