The HCPC audit letter arrives. You have sixty days to submit a CPD portfolio demonstrating that your activities meet Standards 1 through 4. You've been keeping notes — sort of. There's a notebook from 2024, a few WhatsApp voice notes, some conference certificates in your email, and a mental list of jobs you learned something from but never wrote down because you were exhausted between calls.
The HCPC doesn't want to know what you did. They want to know what you learned and how it benefits patient care. That distinction — between doing and reflecting — is where most CPD portfolios fall apart, and it's precisely what this template was built to capture.
Between Jobs, Not After Shift
The design decision that separates this template from standard CPD tools is stated explicitly in the template's welcome text: it lets you add details between jobs and return to complete them later. The Do you need to come back to edit this entry later? checkbox is the mechanism. Flag it Yes, note a title and the key clinical details while the job is still in your hands — literally — and close it. Finish the reflection at the end of shift or the next morning.
This matters because the learning happens during and immediately after the job. The neurological trace is strongest when you're still holding the PRF. An NQP who attended a paediatric sepsis call at 0300 and intubated for the first time under supervision has three hours of learning compressed into that interaction. The window to capture it authentically is narrow. Waiting until monthly CPD submission means you're reconstructing a memory, not documenting an experience.
Start Date/Time of CPD and End date/time of CPD give you calculable hours. Number of hours of the CPD activity is the explicit record. Did this activity occur while you were at work? — a boolean — matters for HCPC audit because work-based learning and self-directed learning are counted differently and both need representation in a compliant portfolio.
The Activity Taxonomy Mapped to HCPC
The template organizes CPD types into four HCPC-aligned categories, each as a multi-select field:
Work-based learning covers nineteen options — Analysing specific events, Case studies, Clinical audit, Coaching from others, Peer review, Reflective practice, and more. Most NQP learning in the first two years falls here, and the multi-select means a single job can legitimately be tagged as Analysing specific events + Learning by doing + Reflective practice simultaneously.
Professional Activity covers sixteen options including Mentoring, Being a tutor, Giving presentations, and Maintaining or developing specialist skills. An NQP who completes their Paramedic Preceptorship and starts supervising student paramedics transitions from predominantly work-based to including Professional Activity CPD.
Formal/educational captures conference attendance, courses (including HCPC-accredited courses), distance learning, research, and writing articles.
Self-directed learning — Reading articles, Reviewing books, Updating knowledge through internet/television — is the category most practitioners undercount. A sixty-minute deep read of the NICE guideline update on sepsis management is legitimate HCPC evidence. The field exists so you remember to log it.
All four categories map directly to the HCPC Standards booleans: Standard 1 (accurate record), Standard 2 (mixture of relevant activities), Standard 3 (quality of practice), Standard 4 (service user benefit). Each entry can be tagged against whichever standards it satisfies.
The Clinical Learning Diary Without Patient Data
For job-referenced entries, the template provides a non-patient-identifiable clinical record. Response type captures the vehicle and response tier: RRV first response, DSA first or subsequent response, DLO, Supervisor. Job came through as versus Job actually was is the delta field — what the CAD triage assigned and what the clinical reality was. The mismatch between "chest pain, Category 2" and the actual STEMI with cardiogenic shock is itself a learning point about pre-hospital triage accuracy.
Clinical skills used and Knowledge subject areas used are free text. These fields are the answer to the HCPC auditor's implicit question: what did you actually do, and what body of knowledge did it draw on? An NQP documenting "12-lead ECG acquisition and interpretation, IV cannulation, CPAP setup" against "Cardiovascular assessment, respiratory pharmacology" is building an evidence trail that reads as professional practice, not just a shift log.
Synopsis (no patient details) is the narrative frame — enough clinical context to make the learning point comprehensible without any PII. A well-written synopsis can reference patient age range, presenting condition category, scene complexity, and clinical decision points without identifying anyone.
Learning points and How to follow up on learning points are the reflection pivot. The first captures what you learned; the second captures what you will do with it. I have followed up on the learning points — Yes/No — closes the loop at a later date. A CPD record that shows a learning point, a follow-up plan, and a completed follow-up demonstrates exactly the iterative improvement cycle that HCPC wants to see.
Evidence Architecture
The supporting documents section allows three files, three images, and three hyperlinks per entry. Course completion certificates, simulation session photographs, published guidelines referenced — all can be attached at point of entry rather than assembled retrospectively. Which HCPC Standard does this evidence relate to? maps each document to the standard it supports.
Reflective model — Gibbs (1988), Johns (1995/2006/2010), Driscoll (1994/2000/2007) — signals to an HCPC auditor which framework you're using, which matters if they're assessing whether your reflection demonstrates genuine insight rather than surface description.
Event name, Event Date, Location, Organisation, and Reflect/Add notes handle formal course and conference records. The Reflection field at the end of the record is where Gibbs or Driscoll runs: what happened, what did you think and feel, what was good and bad, what sense can you make of the situation, what else could you have done, what will you do next time.
The PRF number field — Incident/PRF number — is the cross-reference to the ambulance trust's own records, not patient data. It's the audit trail that proves the incident existed if the record is ever questioned during an HCPC investigation.