Kenya CPD for Nurses and Doctors: 50 Points and 20

Kenya requires doctors to earn 50 CPD points a calendar year and nurses to earn 20, and in both cases the annual practising licence depends on it. The medical requirement sits in a gazetted statutory instrument. The nursing one does not, which is a distinction worth understanding before relying on either.

Kenya is also the jurisdiction where a widely-quoted figure is simply wrong, and this guide corrects it.

Doctors and dentists: 50 points, gazetted

The operative instrument is the Medical Practitioners and Dentists (Inspections and Licensing) Rules 2022, Legal Notice No. 170 of 2022, made on 5 August 2022 and published in Kenya Gazette Supplement No. 146 of 23 September 2022.

Rule 10(2)(a) requires proof of fifty CPD points for a general practice licence, and rule 10(3) directs the Council to issue the licence only to a practitioner who satisfies that requirement and holds professional indemnity cover.

The same fifty points apply across the licence categories: senior registrar under rule 11(2)(b)(iv), temporary foreign senior registrar under rule 12(2)(b)(vi), specialist under rule 13(2)(a), temporary foreign specialist under rule 14(2)(c), and community oral health officer under rule 15(2)(a).

The cycle is the CPD calendar year, 1 January to 31 December, and the minimum must be met within it to remain on the annual register.

The correction: the five-unit figure is not Kenyan law

A figure of five units a year, tied to attendance at two Board-organised or accredited programmes, circulates widely as Kenya requirement. It comes from the Medical Practitioners and Dentists (Continuing Professional Development) Regulations, Legal Notice 132 of 2005, gazetted on 3 November 2005.

Those regulations are marked uncommenced on Kenya Law. Commencement was left to a Cabinet Secretary gazette notice and never happened. They were never brought into force, and the five-unit figure should not be quoted as the Kenyan requirement.

One further discrepancy is worth noting for anyone checking this themselves. The Council own CPD compliance page cites CAP 253, Laws of Kenya, and CPD rules of 2019. No 2019 CPD rules could be verified. The instrument that checks out is Legal Notice 170 of 2022.

Exemptions in the Rules

Two are stated. A first-time senior registrar licence applicant needs no CPD points under rule 11(3). An applicant for a non-clinical licence need not provide CPD points under rule 18(2). No age-based or ill-health exemption appears in the Rules.

What happens if the points are short

No licence issues. Rule 10(3) makes the points a precondition, and rule 21 requires the Council to reject a non-compliant application with written reasons. Separately, the Council states that failure to adhere to the licensure rule attracts a 50 per cent penalty on the licence fees, and that failure to renew is a contravention of the law.

There is also a reputational mechanism: the Council publishes licensure statuses by 31 March each year, naming compliant practitioners and facilities.

How points are earned

The Council publishes a detailed tariff. It is undated, which is worth flagging, but it is the Council own document and the figures are specific:

• Conferences, seminars and workshops: 3 points for a half-day, 5 for a full day, maximum 25 per event. Hands-on skills workshops are rated the same, also capped at 25.
• Special lectures, in-person CME or webinars of at least 45 minutes: 3 points.
• Morbidity and mortality meetings, grand rounds, clinical meetings and journal clubs of at least 30 minutes: 3 points.
• Courses: a short course of one week to three months earns 25; a medium course of 14 weeks to eight months earns 40; a postgraduate course of six months or more earns 50 per calendar year, which alone satisfies the annual requirement.
• Attachment at a centre of excellence: 1 point per day.
• Presenting: 5 points for a presentation of at least 30 minutes; 15 for a keynote or guest lecture of at least 45 minutes; 20 per event, prorated, for training at a hands-on workshop; 3 for facilitating or coordinating.
• Publishing: 20 points for a peer-reviewed article as principal or co-author; 20 per publication for peer reviewing or journal editing; 50 for authoring a book; 25 for a book chapter.
• Teaching and examining: 10 for developing or reviewing an online CPD course or curriculum; 15 as an external examiner; 10 per candidate per year for supervising a Masters, PhD or Fellowship candidate; 10 a year as CPD coordinator of an accredited provider.
• Service: 2 points each for free community medical activities, capped at 10 a year; 2 each for health-related media appearances, also capped at 10; 10 per assignment for technical working groups or ethics committees; 5 a year for national or international recognition awards; 3 per day for Council regulatory activities.

There are no mandatory categories. Practitioners are encouraged, not required, to devote at least 20 per cent of activities to supplementary topics such as ethics, leadership, public health, patient safety and research. The Council may prescribe cross-cadre activities in a given year.

Four things earn nothing: routine ward rounds, class lectures, staff meetings, and promotional product meetings. Carry-forward is not addressed in any Council source, so no banking rule should be assumed.

The iCPD portal

Kenya runs a working points-logging system, which several comparable jurisdictions do not. Practitioners register on iCPD, or migrate an existing account, browse and filter activities by specialty or provider, upload evidence, claim points for token and non-token activities, view historical points by year under a portfolio view, and print a yearly CPD diary.

Token claims post immediately. Non-token claims and new account verifications are approved within 72 hours, and rejected claims show a reason and can be resubmitted.

Becoming an accredited provider

The accreditation fee is KSh 15,000, non-refundable, paid through e-Citizen using a system-generated invoice number, under the Medical Practitioners and Dentists Act, Cap 253. There are currently 190 accredited providers, including referral, county, private and faith-based hospitals, professional associations, medical and dental schools, and NGOs.

The requirements are substantial and unusually specific about infrastructure:

• Certificate of incorporation, a cover letter, and a proposed annual calendar of CPD activities.
• Recommendation letters from at least two referees with CVs, and testimonials from two referees who are medical, dental or oral health practitioners.
• Evidence of capacity: a training room or resource centre, internet of at least 35 Mbps, an online platform, and equipment for practical sessions.
• Specialist or experienced trainers, an appointed CPD coordinator, and validation of international speakers licensing before any activity.
• Participant assessment and feedback methods, signed ethical guidelines on conflict of interest and patient confidentiality, a quality assurance policy and plan, full disclosure of sponsorship, and partnership agreements where available.

The accreditation term and any renewal fee could not be established from published sources. Providers annual licence can be suspended or cancelled and accreditation revoked for unscrupulous practices.

Nurses and midwives: 20 points, by Council policy

The Nursing Council of Kenya requires at least 20 CPD points for annual licence renewal and retention, alongside an online practice-licence application. The renewal fee is KSh 1,500 with a stated 24-hour service timeline. The source is the Council Service Charter 2025, Revision 2.

Three honest limitations apply, and they matter more here than on the medical side.

Points or hours?

The Service Charter says 20 points. The Council own Policy Brief 002/2025, from April 2025, says nurses and midwives must complete 20 hours of CPD annually. The figure is the same but the unit is not, and whether one point equals one hour could not be established from Council sources.

There are no published guidelines

The Service Charter refers to the CPD guidelines but the Council does not publish them. The full downloads list contains no standalone CPD guidelines document, only the April 2025 policy brief. As a result, mandatory categories, caps, carry-forward, exemptions and the treatment of self-directed learning are all unestablished for Kenyan nurses.

It is not gazetted

Registration and licensing rest on the Nurses and Midwives Act, Cap 257, which contains no express CPD provision. The nearest provisions are regulation-making powers on courses and standards of practice, the sections on annual retention fees, and section 17 on private-practice certificates, which are valid to 30 December each year and under section 17(4) bar private practice where renewal is not applied for within 30 days of expiry.

No Nurses CPD Rules or Legal Notice could be found. On the evidence, the nursing requirement rests on Council policy expressed in a service charter rather than on a gazetted instrument, and no dated council resolution establishing it could be located.

There is no CPD-specific sanction either. The exposure is the general offence of practising unlicensed, which under Cap 257 carries a fine of up to KSh 1,000,000 and up to a year imprisonment under section 17(8), up to KSh 100,000 or six months under section 20(1), and up to KSh 500,000 or two years under section 19(2).

Provider accreditation for nursing

The Nursing Council publishes a clear fee ladder, with a 14 working day timeline:

• Individual: KSh 5,000
• Organisational or institutional: KSh 15,000
• Corporate with 2 to 25 units or branches: KSh 100,000
• Corporate with 26 to 50 units: KSh 150,000
• Corporate with 51 or more units, including foreign branches: KSh 200,000

An application needs the accreditation form with attachments, the curriculum or CPD content, and an annual summary report for renewal.

The Council runs an online service portal where practitioners can view their CPD records, and offers a free CPD evidence review and approval service with a five working day timeline, plus a free CPD secret code service. Evidence may come from an accredited provider or in line with the CPD guidelines for other relevant CPD, which implies non-accredited learning can be submitted for approval. Since the guidelines are unpublished, that cannot be confirmed.

The practical position

A Kenyan doctor or dentist needs 50 points between 1 January and 31 December, logged on iCPD, or no licence issues and a 50 per cent penalty applies on the fees. A Kenyan nurse or midwife needs 20 points or hours in the renewal year, submitted through the Council portal, with a KSh 1,500 renewal fee.

For providers, Kenya is one of the more attractive regulated markets in the region: accreditation is cheap on the medical side at KSh 15,000, the fee ladder is transparent on the nursing side, and there is a functioning national portal that records points, which removes a chunk of the administrative burden that falls on providers elsewhere.

By comparison, Australia regulates nurses, midwives and doctors through a single agency, Canada sets nursing requirements province by province, and South Africa runs its nursing scheme through a dedicated council. Kenya distinguishing feature is the gap in legal footing between its two professions: the doctors requirement is in a gazetted statutory instrument, and the nurses is in a service charter.