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Every profession has a professional body. These bodies ensure professional standards including ethics, professional qualifications and continuous professional development. NZISM in conjunction with the Institution of Occupational Health and Safety (IOSH) has agreed to a CPD programme for NZ OH&S practitioners.
The CPD programme will operate alongside a new NZISM Professional Grading Structure.
The new grading structure is:
- Affiliate
- Technician
- Graduate
- Certified Member
- Fellow
- Life/ Honorary member
This structure is aligned with international systems thus allowing transparent and transferable OH&S qualifications. All Grades above Affiliate will be required to participate in the CPD programme. The new structure creates an objective career pathway for OH&S professionals. CPD is the maintenance programme that surrounds the grading structure. CPD ensures the members are fresh and use new and up to date material. It requires members to plan ahead and programme learning opportunities that are important to them, their work or topics that just interests them.
CPD is NOT prescriptive nor is it just attending courses. CPD can be referred to as “dear diary” system. This means if you have learnt something new that you can use, or apply to clients or staff then that is CPD. It can be looking for courses on a particular topic, attending them and then REFLECTING on what you got out of that course. The Reflection is the important step and will be new for some people. When reflecting one asks, what did I learn? How can I use it, is it important? It is the reflection step that we often miss out on. Once the reflection has been completed members will be required to log that new learning on the IOSH CPD framework. This will occur through the NZISM’s Member only page on the NZISM web site.
Members are encouraged to plan ahead. By making a plan and logging that plan you have a goal to achieve each year. If something new occurs that is outside your plan then simply log into the CPD data base and update/ change your plan. Logging in shouldn’t be done daily but it is suggested at least 3 monthly updates are maintained. This will require some discipline on your behalf.
Members rate their learning on a scale of:
0 Nothing new, nothing learnt. 1 Some information but really just confirming what I already knew. 2 Good new learning, information that can be used in the future. 3 Great new information. I can use, introduce tomorrow. This information is all new and was not known before hand.
CPD activity must occur in three areas. Maintaining core skills, new technical/ speciality areas and transferable skills that are used in OH&S and also in other community spheres.
Really CPD is just formalising what we do currently. NZISM members who attend Branch meetings and training days can use this for CPD. Attending conferences is CPD. Researching and reading new information is CPD. ISOH and NZISM do require a percentage of members plans to be randomly audited each year. This ensures both the quality of CPD plans and that individuals are not over crediting learning plans and reflections. Members that are required to complete a CPD programme are required to achieve 10 points per year. Points are awarded for just creating your annual learning plan.
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