Medical Council CPD Categories Explained (2025 Update)

If you're a doctor practising in Ireland, you already know CPD isn't optional — it's a legal requirement under the Medical Council's Professional Competence Scheme (PCS). What changed in May 2025 is the shape of it: instead of a single pool of "CPD credits" you could fill however you liked, your annual hours are now split across four named categories, each with its own minimum (or maximum). This guide walks through what the Professional Competence Scheme actually is, what each of the four categories means in practice, how many hours you need in each, and how the Medical Council and your Postgraduate Training Body track whether you've done it.

What is the Professional Competence Scheme?

The Professional Competence Scheme is the statutory system through which registered medical practitioners in Ireland demonstrate they're keeping their knowledge and skills up to date. It isn't a voluntary training scheme — it's a legal obligation under Part 11 of the Medical Practitioners Act 2007, and every doctor registered to practise medicine in Ireland has been required to enrol in a PCS since May 2011.

The Medical Council sets the overarching framework, but it doesn't run the day-to-day scheme itself. Instead, doctors enrol through their relevant Postgraduate Training Body (PCB) — the college that matches their area of practice. GPs typically enrol through the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP), surgeons through the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), physicians through the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI), anaesthetists through the College of Anaesthesiologists of Ireland, and so on. Each PCB administers its own scheme within the Medical Council's rules, so the exact tools and portals you use will depend on which college you're enrolled with — but the underlying category structure and hours requirement are consistent across the schemes.

The four CPD categories, one by one

The framework that took effect from 1 May 2025 organises CPD into four categories. Here's what each one actually covers.

Planning CPD

This is the smallest category by design — up to 5 hours a year — and it's about the plan, not the activity itself. At the start of your scheme year you draw up a Professional Development Plan (PDP), reflecting on your scope of practice against the Medical Council's domains of good professional practice and setting out what you intend to learn or improve over the coming year. Several PCBs award the planning credits automatically once you've worked through the plan's steps, since the value is in the reflection rather than in logging hours.

Practice Review

At least 10 hours a year need to come from Practice Review — activities that involve genuinely looking at how you (or your team) are practising, rather than just attending something. This covers clinical or practice audits, quality improvement projects, and evaluation activities carried out at an individual, team, or organisational level. Reviewing critical incidents and significant events, analysing patient feedback, and running practice-level audits all typically count here. The common thread is that you're assessing real practice data and identifying what to change, not just consuming content.

Work-Based Learning

This is the largest single category for most practising doctors — a minimum of 15 hours — and it's meant to capture the learning that happens as a normal part of clinical work. Grand rounds, multidisciplinary team meetings, morbidity and mortality meetings, journal clubs, case discussions, teaching, supervising trainees, research, and structured personal reading or listening (including medical podcasts, for example) can all count. It's the category most doctors already do plenty of without necessarily labelling it — the shift for 2025 is that it now needs to be logged and evidenced as its own bucket rather than folded into a general CPD tally.

Accredited CPD Activities

The largest category — a minimum of 20 hours — covers formally accredited continuing education: conferences, courses, workshops, webinars, diplomas, and other structured learning that carries recognised CPD accreditation, whether that accreditation comes from an Irish body, EACCME, or the equivalent body in the country where the activity is delivered. Unlike Work-Based Learning, this category generally requires a certificate or other formal evidence of attendance, because the activity has been externally assessed and approved rather than simply undertaken.

The annual hours requirement

Across the four categories, practising doctors need a total of 50 CPD hours (or credits — the terms are used interchangeably in the scheme) in every scheme year, which runs from 1 May to 30 April.

Doctors who aren't currently engaged in the practice of medicine follow a slightly adjusted split: Planning CPD stays at 5 hours and Accredited CPD stays at a minimum of 20 hours, but Practice Review and Work-Based Learning are combined into a single requirement of at least 25 hours between them, since a doctor outside active practice may not have a clinical caseload to audit in the same way.

How compliance is tracked and reported

Compliance runs through your PCB, not directly through a Medical Council portal. Most schemes ask you to log activities and upload evidence — certificates, audit reports, reflective notes — to your PCB's online PCS system as you complete them through the year, and to retain your records (typically for around six years) in case you're selected for a verification audit. On top of that, when you renew your registration with the Medical Council each year, you're required to declare which PCS you're enrolled in and your enrolment date. Failing to make that declaration is treated seriously — it's described as putting your continuing registration at risk — which is a good reminder that PCS compliance isn't just an internal college matter, it feeds directly into your right to remain on the Medical Register.

If you're also involved in wider clinical governance training, it's worth knowing that some of that work can genuinely double up as CPD. Open Disclosure training, for instance, often fits naturally under Work-Based Learning or Accredited CPD Activities depending on how it's delivered and accredited at your organisation — worth checking with your PCB rather than assuming either way.

Frequently asked questions

Do all doctors registered in Ireland have to complete these CPD hours every year?
Yes, if you hold a live registration to practise medicine in Ireland — participation in a Professional Competence Scheme is a legal requirement under the Medical Practitioners Act 2007, not an optional extra.

Which body do I actually report my CPD to — the Medical Council or my college?
Day-to-day, you log and evidence your CPD with your Postgraduate Training Body (your PCS provider, such as ICGP, RCSI or RCPI), which runs the scheme on the Medical Council's behalf. Separately, you declare your PCS enrolment to the Medical Council each year as part of registration renewal.

Can I move hours between categories if I've done more Accredited CPD than Work-Based Learning?
The category minimums are exactly that — minimums for each category, not a pool you can freely reshuffle. You can exceed a category's minimum and put the surplus toward your overall 50-hour total, but you still need to hit the floor in each of the four categories individually.

What happens if I don't complete my 50 hours in a scheme year?
The specifics depend on your PCB's own scheme rules, but non-completion is not a formality to ignore — PCBs can follow up directly, and failing to properly declare your PCS enrolment and standing to the Medical Council at registration renewal is described as putting your continuing registration at risk. If you're behind, the right move is to contact your PCB directly rather than guess at the consequences.

Getting your CPD plan in order

The 2025 category structure is really asking you to do what most good doctors already do — plan, review your own practice, learn from day-to-day work, and keep up formal education — and simply to log each of those separately so it's visible and auditable. The fastest way to stay on top of it is to check your specific PCB's portal early in the scheme year, set your Professional Development Plan within the first few weeks, and track hours against each category as you go rather than trying to reconstruct a year's worth of learning in April. If you work alongside wider healthcare teams and want to see how other statutory and vocational training routes fit together, our guide to QQI Level 5 Healthcare Support covers another widely used qualification pathway in the sector.

This guide is part of Learnsignal's ongoing coverage of professional qualifications and training routes.