How CPD Differs Across Regulated Professions

Accountancy is not the only profession that mandates continuing education, and it is far from the strictest. Looking at how other regulated professions do it is the fastest way to see that a stated number of hours tells you almost nothing on its own.

Australia's own health practitioner regulator makes the point explicitly: its hours are not comparable across national boards, even within one country and one regulator, because each board defines the unit differently. That is the single most useful idea to carry into any cross-border comparison — including the accountancy ones.

Australia: fifteen boards, one regulator, no common unit

Australia is the best natural experiment available. One agency registers fifteen health professions, and the requirements diverge sharply.

• Medical practitioners: 50 hours and the CPD home model — a structural innovation where an accredited body administers your compliance.
• Dentistry: 60 hours over three years — with scope-of-practice conditions attached.
• Pharmacy: credits, not hours — weighted by activity type, so an hour is not a credit.
• Nursing and midwifery: dual registration and endorsements — the requirement compounds rather than overlapping.
• Psychology: mandatory peer consultation hours — learning that must involve another practitioner.
• Physiotherapy: no interactive minimum — and why that is unusual among the boards.
• Occupational therapy: interactive hours required — the direct contrast with physiotherapy.
• Paramedicine: interactive hours — a newer board with a distinct split.
• Podiatry: 20, 30, 40 or 50 hours — the requirement scales with endorsement.
• Optometry: an uplift for endorsed practitioners — therapeutic endorsement raises the figure.
• Chiropractic: hours plus a CPR requirement and portfolio — a clinical-skills component no accountancy body has an analogue for.
• Osteopathy: board-approved topics — the regulator prescribes subject matter directly.
• Chinese medicine: requirements by division — different figures within a single profession.
• Medical radiation practice: a triennium model — the three-year cycle familiar from accountancy.

The United Kingdom: audit by sampling, and a provider-registration exception

The UK regulators share a common approach — a standards-based requirement tested by random audit rather than an hours count — with one notable departure.

• What HCPC audit outcomes actually show — published figures on how many registrants pass, which is the kind of data accountancy bodies rarely release.
• GDC: hours and scope for dental care professionals — an hours-based scheme, unlike most UK health regulators.
• GOC: the provider-registration exception — the one UK health regulator that registers CPD providers, which matters commercially.
• GPhC: pharmacy technician requirements — and how they differ from pharmacists'.
• GOsC and GCC: osteopaths and chiropractors — two small regulators with quite different designs.
• Prosthetists and orthotists, speech and language therapists and podiatrists with prescribing annotations — how HCPC renewal and audit works in practice.
• Hearing aid dispensers — registration and CPD for a small registrant group.
• How royal college credit schemes work for doctors — a voluntary layer above the statutory one.
• Psychiatry: the RCPsych OP98 requirements — peer-group based rather than hours based.
• Architects: ARB's mandatory topics — a regulator prescribing content, which is rare outside health.
• Teaching: INSET days in England — CPD delivered through employer time rather than individual obligation.

Ireland: CORU and the published audit figures

• Social workers: what CORU's audit figures show — genuine enforcement data, published.
• Dietitians and optometrists and dispensing opticians — profession-specific CORU requirements.
• Paramedics: PHECC requirements — a separate regulator from CORU.

Asia and the Middle East

• Singapore dentistry: verifiable points and a core requirement, and pharmacy's qualifying period.
• Singapore nursing: mandatory from 2028, not yet — a dated future change, often misreported as current.
• Malaysia: CPD as a prerequisite for the annual practising certificate, and the nursing board's credit points.
• India: dentists have no national CPD requirement — a verified negative, like Oman's in accountancy.
• Dubai: licence renewal with a cap on online learning — an explicit limit on remote study.
• Pakistan and Nigeria — nurses and doctors, where the obligation is tied to licence renewal.

Canada

• Alberta physicians and British Columbia physicians — provincial medical colleges, mirroring how Canadian accountancy is also provincially regulated.
• British Columbia lawyers: Rule 3-29 — a named rule carrying the obligation.

Law, engineering, surveying and financial services

• Singapore: junior lawyers face a higher requirement — the inverse of most seniority-based schemes, and how points differ between public and private practice.
• Malaysia: mandatory but not linked to the licence — and how the points system works.
• Pakistan: bar council requirements for advocates.
• Mechanical engineers and electrical engineers — institution-led schemes with no statutory backing, plus an engineering CPD record template.
• RICS for surveyors and CIOB for construction — both tie CPD to membership class.
• Mortgage advisers under the FCA and insurance broking competence requirements — the closest regulatory cousins to accountancy, since both sit under a financial-conduct regulator.
• CICM for credit management — grades, qualifications and CPD in one scheme.
• IAPP's CIPM certification — a certification-maintenance model rather than a licence model.

What accountants should take from this

Three things recur across every profession above.

The unit is never neutral. Hours, credits, points, units and CPD homes are not interchangeable, and several regulators weight activities differently within the same scheme. Australia's regulator says so about its own boards. The same caution applies when comparing accountancy bodies, which is the argument we make in detail about why CPD hours do not convert between countries.

Composition decides compliance, not the total. Interactive minimums, peer-consultation requirements, board-approved topics and caps on online study all mean two practitioners with identical totals can be in different compliance positions. Accountancy's equivalents are structured-versus-unstructured splits and dedicated ethics quotas — of which Romania's two structured hours a year is the only explicit European example.

Health regulators publish enforcement data and accountancy bodies largely do not. CORU and HCPC both publish audit outcomes. That is why our post on CPD review outcomes leans on figures from outside accountancy — they are the only published ones available.

Australia's health practitioner regulator publishes its registration standards for every board at ahpra.gov.au.

For the accountancy picture, start with CPD for accountants or, for where the international figures originate, where accountant CPD requirements come from.

Two more cross-profession findings

• The Philippines caps self-directed learning differently by profession — one national framework, many different limits, which is the clearest single illustration of the point made at the top of this page.
• No Indian regulator publishes CPD enforcement data — the contrast with CORU and HCPC, and a reminder that absence of published data is not evidence of compliance.

Where to get CPD that meets these requirements

Most of the schemes above accept learning from any competent provider, provided it is relevant and you can evidence it. Two of the groups covered on this page are served directly:

• Healthcare compliance CPD — for the nursing, pharmacy, dental, allied health and medical registrants whose requirements are set out above.
• Legal CPD — for solicitors, advocates and in-house counsel working to bar council and law society schemes.
• Workplace and HR compliance training — which satisfies the employer-side obligations several of these regulators impose alongside the individual one.

Before booking anything, check two things against your own regulator's rules rather than against a provider's description: whether the activity falls inside your scheme's verifiable or interactive category, and whether any cap applies to online or self-directed study. Both vary by board even within one country, which is the point this page opens with.