Brazil CPD for Nurses and Doctors: Why There Is None

Brazil imposes no continuing professional development requirement on nurses or on doctors. There are no points, no hours, no cycle, no filing and no audit, and neither profession has a periodic registration renewal that CPD could be attached to.

For doctors that is not an oversight. Mandatory recertification was adopted twice and repealed twice, and a third attempt in 2025 was struck down within two months. For nurses it was never introduced at all. This guide sets out the instruments, because the history is the most useful part of the answer.

Doctors: adopted twice, repealed twice

Four Federal Council of Medicine resolutions tell the story.

• Resolução CFM 1.755/2004, published 14 December 2004, instituted revalidation of specialist titles. Titles carried a five-year validity and holders had up to five years to revalidate, in the resolution words, on pain of their non-recognition. It created a National Accreditation Commission to run the scheme.
• Resolução CFM 1.772/2005, published 24 August 2005, revoked the 2004 resolution and replaced it with the Certificado de Atualização Profissional. Holders of titles issued from 1 January 2006 had five years to submit, obligatorily, to certification, on pain of loss of the registration of those titles. The certificate was valid five years. Holders of pre-2006 titles could opt in voluntarily and kept their registrations unaltered if they did not.
• Resolução CFM 1.984/2012, published 14 March 2012, revoked the 2005 resolution outright. Its statement of reasons is unusually candid: implementation had not proved effective in the face of great resistance from the medical class. The Accreditation Commission was dissolved.
• Resolução CFM 2.293/2021, published 24 May 2021, revoked the 2012 resolution as one that had lost its object. This is a housekeeping measure removing a repealing instrument that had already done its work. It does not revive the certificate scheme.

So between 2006 and 2012 Brazil did have a mandatory recertification requirement for specialist titles, with loss of title registration as the sanction. It has had none since March 2012.

The 2025 attempt, and why it failed

In February 2025 the Associação Médica Brasileira issued Resolução AMB nº 01 of 12 February 2025, creating the Certificado de Atualização de Título de Especialista, compulsory for holders of titles from calls for applications published after 15 March 2025, with a five-year validity.

The distinction that decided the matter is one of status. The AMB is a private association, not the regulator. The Federal Council of Medicine publicly rejected the resolution in a note dated 18 February 2025, holding that conditioning the specialist qualification registration on periodic revalidation expressly contradicts article 17 of Law 3.268 of 1957, that regulating the profession is the Council exclusive prerogative, and that no physician with an active specialist qualification registration would have their specialty revoked on that basis.

Reporting indicates the Federal Regional Court of the Third Region suspended the AMB resolution on 4 April 2025 following a suit by the São Paulo regional council, and that the AMB announced its revocation on 8 April 2025. The AMB own revoking instrument could not be located, so that last step rests on a secondary source rather than on a resolution number.

What is being prepared now

An AMB and CFM working group is developing a register of updated specialist physicians, reported as requiring 100 credits over five consecutive years and as voluntary. The AMB president is reported as saying that making it mandatory would require legislative change, which is consistent with the Council own 2025 reasoning. This rests on secondary reporting from April 2026 and no instrument has been published.

There is nothing to attach a requirement to

Under Law 3.268 of 1957, registration with a regional council is required before practice under article 17 and a professional card is issued under article 18. There is no periodic renewal and no CPD condition. The only recurring obligation is the annual fee, and the law states no consequence for non-payment; the disciplinary penalties in article 22 are not tied to it.

That is the structural reason Brazil has no CPD regime, and it mirrors the position in several other jurisdictions where continuing education has never taken hold: without an annual or periodic licence to withhold, there is no natural enforcement point.

One clarification, because it is regularly confused. The Revalida examination revalidates foreign medical degrees. It is an entry mechanism for doctors qualified abroad, not a recertification scheme, and it should not be presented as evidence that Brazil recertifies its doctors.

Nurses: never introduced

No Federal Nursing Council resolution imposes continuing education as a condition of registration, of registration renewal, or of keeping a specialist title.

• Resolução Cofen 536/2017, Annex I, is the registration manual. It contains no continuing-education, CPD or recurring course-hour requirement. The only hours figure in it is an entry requirement: 4,000 hours of initial training over five years. The professional identity card is valid five years from issue and renewable on request 30 days before expiry — but that is an administrative card renewal, not a competence renewal, and what it requires is proof of payment of the current year annual fee.
• Resolução Cofen 581/2018, of 11 July 2018, governs specialist titles. Registration of postgraduate titles is compulsory and free of charge, and unregistered titles may not be advertised. There is no periodic renewal and no continuing-education condition. It has been amended several times to adjust the specialty annex.

One resolution that is often mistaken for a mandate

Resolução Cofen 778 of 23 May 2025 approves a Corporate Education Policy for the Council system, giving the federal and regional councils 180 days to implement it. Registered nurses appear in its target audience as beneficiaries of training offered, alongside council staff.

It imposes no obligation, sets no hours, attaches no consequence for non-participation, and does not link education to registration. It is a policy about what the councils will provide, not about what nurses must do. Anyone citing it as evidence of Brazilian nursing CPD has misread it.

An honest limit on this finding: the conclusion rests on the Council own resolutions rather than on the statute. Law 7.498 of 1986, the nursing practice law, could not be read at source because the government legislation portal blocked access. If statutory confirmation is needed it should be obtained another way.

Consequence of non-compliance

For both professions the question does not arise. There is no measurable standard to breach, no filing to miss, no audit to fail and no registration consequence. For doctors, the only sanction ever attached — loss of specialist title registration under the 2005 resolution — has been inoperative since March 2012.

What this means for training providers

Brazil is a very large professional market with no compliance driver, which makes it a different proposition from most jurisdictions.

• There is no provider accreditation scheme for either profession, because there is no CPD system to accredit into. The accreditation commission that would have done it for medicine was dissolved in 2012. Any claim that a course is Council-approved for continuing education purposes describes a category that does not exist.
• Demand is driven by specialisation and career, not compliance. Brazil has a highly segmented medical and nursing workforce, an active specialty society structure, and real appetite for advanced training. It simply has to be sold on merit.
• Watch the voluntary register. If the AMB and CFM working group lands the 100-credit scheme, it will create the first structured national credit framework for Brazilian doctors since 2012 — voluntary, but a framework providers could map to.
• Portuguese is not optional. The profession works in Portuguese and its instruments are in Portuguese.

The practical position

A Brazilian nurse or doctor needs no continuing education to keep practising. They register once, pay an annual fee, and that is the extent of the recurring obligation. A specialist title, once registered, does not expire.

The contrast with the rest of this series is stark. Hong Kong made nursing CPD mandatory on 1 July 2026 with removal from the register as the end point, Kenya requires 50 points of doctors and 20 of nurses every year to hold a licence, and India requires 30 credits of nurses over five years while asking nothing of doctors. Brazil asks nothing of either, and has twice decided against doing so.