PDP Providers

A comprehensive range of educational activities have been shown to provide educational benefit to rural medical practitioners and there are vast differences in the practices of Fellows of the College. Consequently, a wide range of educational activities relevant to rural medicine can be credited towards the requisite 100 PDP points each three-year cycle.

The PDP recognises five categories of educational activities:

1. Continuing Medical Education
2. Quality Assurance and Clinical Assessment
3. General Practice or Rural Medicine Accreditation
4. Educator Activities
5. Educational Development

ACRRM Standards for professional development require educational and quality assurance activities to be high quality and relevant to rural practice. As such, educational activities are required to meet a number of criteria prior to being accredited, awarded points and promoted to our Fellows and members.

Criteria for the assessment of education

The following criteria are used to assess PDP provider applications:

1. Is there evidence in the application that the planned educational activity is based on a rural medical practitioner’s educational needs?
2. Does the activity relate to one or more of the ACRRM educational domains?
3. Are rural medical practitioners involved in the planning and implementation stages of the educational event/activity?
4. Does the educational event/activity have clear, specific learning objectives?
5. Are the planned educational strategies based on adult learning principles?
6. Does the educational event/activity include a combination of educational interventions, which predispose, enable and reinforce behaviour change?
7. Does the application show that some impact evaluation (changes in knowledge, skill, attitude, practice or patient outcome) is planned?

Process for assessing applications

Step 1:

Education providers should obtain a PDP Provider Application Form.

Educational Events

Education events, such as workshops, conferences and seminars, can be accredited with ACRRM's Professional Development Program for recognition of our member's continuing member education. Application forms and information is available below.

Educational Event Application Form

 Educational Event Accreditation Guide

Step 2:

Completed application forms are sent to the ACRRM office by the education provider in electronic format.

Step 3:

ACRRM’s PDP Officer reviews the application and recommends appropriate point allocations. This assessment is forwarded to the ACRRM PDP Committee for consideration and approval.

Step 4:

ACRRM notifies the education provider of the outcome of assessment.

Step 5:

Those activities successfully accredited by ACRRM will be posted on the searchable Educational Inventory of the RRMEO website (www.rrmeo.com).

Step 6:

Following completion of the educational activity providers agree to the following:

• Provide participants that attend this educational activity with a record of their participation following the event
• Send a completed attendance list of all those attending who wish to report their participation to the ACRRM PDP within one month of the activity
• Provide a summary of the evaluation results to the ACRRM PDP within two months of the activity unless otherwise negotiated

Costs

There are no charges for the accreditation of educational activities as ACRRM is keen to facilitate rather than impede the promotion of high quality and relevant courses.

For more information

Please refer to the PDP Handbook which provides information regarding the program as well as the process of accreditation. If you would like assistance with any aspect of your application contact ACRRM’s PDP Officer on (free call) 1800 223 226 or email  pdpacrrm [dot] org [dot] au.