We walk through the benefits of continuous professional development and how it can support career growth.
Starting a career after meeting academic or clinical standards doesn’t mean learning should stop. Instead, continuous professional development (CPD) plays an important role for professionals who want to progress their careers, build new skills, and continue to feel challenged in their roles. In this blog, therefore, we’ll cover:
• What continuous professional development is
• The 9 benefits of CPD
• How to incorporate better CPD processes
So, let’s get started.
What is continuous professional development
Continuous professional development is a process professionals use to continue learning and developing throughout their careers. In regulated professions, such as nursing, regulatory bodies require professionals to complete a set number of CPD hours to maintain registration. For example, nurses and midwives complete a revalidation process every three years to remain registered.
9 benefits of continuous professional development
When you start a new role, regardless of industry, you usually go through an onboarding and training process. This step is essential, as it helps you become familiar with new tools, tasks, and ways of working.
However, once mandatory training ends, you may wonder what to focus on next. Alternatively, your regulatory body may require you to complete further learning. Either way, CPD delivers significant value for nine key reasons:
• Build your skills
• Develop your confidence
• Provide better outcomes
• Stay motivated
• Find new passions
• Be open to new opportunities
• Keep up to date
• Reflect and grow
• Hit key requirements
Let’s explore these benefits in more detail.
Build your skills
To start with the most obvious benefit, learning directly improves your skills. Whether you develop new capabilities or strengthen existing ones, CPD helps you grow professionally. In addition, access to a wide range of courses allows you to broaden your expertise and expand your capabilities. Because CPD often involves a significant number of learning hours, you also gain meaningful experience in each subject area.
Develop your confidence
As professionals build new skills through learning, they also grow in confidence. Over time, this confidence compounds as experience increases.
Training — whether delivered through seminars, online learning, or on-the-job experience — strengthens soft skills such as communication, leadership, and problem-solving. As a result, learners feel more confident in their roles and perform more effectively.
Provide better outcomes
As learners improve their skills and confidence, they naturally perform better at work.
For example, they may identify ways to improve processes, complete tasks more efficiently, or deliver higher-quality work. In healthcare settings, this can directly improve patient care. Given current pressures in healthcare, even small improvements can have a meaningful impact.
Stay motivated
Investing time in personal development can reinvigorate motivation. In fact, committing to CPD often exposes learners to new resources, opportunities, and perspectives, which helps keep learning fresh and engaging.
Find new passions
Because CPD offers such a wide range of learning opportunities, learners often explore subjects outside their day-to-day responsibilities. As a result, they may discover new interests, skills, or even entirely new specialisms.
Ultimately, investing in learning supports both professional and personal growth by encouraging curiosity and exploration.
Be open to new opportunities
As learners acquire new knowledge and skills, they often uncover strengths or interests they hadn’t recognised before. Consequently, CPD can open the door to new job opportunities — whether within the same sector or in a completely different field.
Keep up to date
By continuing to learn, you’re ensuring that knowledge and skills are kept fresh and up to date. This is critically important in sectors like healthcare, as it ensures good patient care since learners are refreshed in their knowledge.
Reflect and grow
One key aspect of the CPD cycle is reflecting on your learning activity and using it to develop in your role. This is important for developing emotional intelligence and ensuring you approach challenges armed with the knowledge and confidence you need.
Hit key requirements
Of course, for some, CPD is a requirement of their role. As such, CPD can sometimes feel like a tick box. But, by investing early in continuous professional development, you can ensure that learning materials are meaningful.
How to better integrate CPD into your learning strategy
Integrating continuous professional development into your learning management system is a must. To do this effectively, Totara have created two exciting plugins that can be added to Totara Learn:
CPD Hub: A tool that allows L&D teams to better track spend, and users can search and apply for training right in the LMS.
CPD Diary: CPD Diary helps track and manage continuous professional development (CPD) across your organisation.
The CPD Diary is a structured digital log where learners record their learning activities—whether that’s training courses, conferences, supervision sessions or on-the-job learning. Learners can manually enter learning, or it can be logged automatically (e.g. through course completions).
Managers can set clear expectations using diary templates, track progress, and control how completion is assessed and approved. CPD Diary is especially useful in regulated sectors or any role requiring demonstrable ongoing professional development.
