Osteopathy Board of Australia CPD: 25 Hours and Four on Set Topics

The Osteopathy Board of Australia sets 25 hours of continuing professional development a year. It is the only odd figure in a scheme otherwise built on twenties and thirties, and the structure behind it is unusual too: four of the 25 hours must be spent on topics the Board itself specifies, and a first aid requirement sits outside the hours altogether.

Twenty-five hours, four of them on Board-approved topics

The requirement is 25 hours a year, including a minimum of four hours in topics approved by the Board. That is a different kind of sub-quota from the interactive and participatory floors most of the other boards impose. An interactive minimum constrains the format of the activity and leaves the subject to the practitioner. A board-approved-topics requirement constrains the subject and leaves the format open.

The practical consequence is that an osteopath cannot satisfy those four hours by choosing well-regarded clinical material of their own selection. The topics are set, and a course has to be on one of them. For a training buyer, that makes the four hours the only part of the Australian osteopathy requirement where the regulator effectively dictates the curriculum, and the part where a catalogue has to name the topic rather than describe the quality.

First aid is a separate standing obligation

Alongside the hours, osteopaths carry a first aid requirement that does not count toward the 25. It is a standing qualification to be held and maintained rather than an annual activity to be completed, so it runs on its own clock and does not reduce the CPD total in any year.

Chiropractic works the same way, with a resuscitation qualification required separately from a 20-hour CPD obligation, as set out in our guide to chiropractic CPD, the CPR requirement and the portfolio. The two manual therapy professions are alike in this, and unlike paramedicine, where no first aid or life-support requirement appears in the CPD standard at all despite the nature of the work.

For an employer, the lesson is that an osteopath's annual training cost is not 25 hours. It is 25 hours, of which four are topic-constrained, plus a periodic first aid renewal on a separate cycle, and a budget built from the headline figure alone understates it twice.

Why 25 does not sit on the same axis as 20 or 30

Placed in a table of headline numbers, osteopathy's 25 reads as modestly heavier than occupational therapy's 20 and modestly lighter than paramedicine's 30. The comparison is close to meaningless, because the three requirements constrain different things.

Occupational therapy's 20 contains five interactive hours and nothing else, which makes it the scheme's baseline shape, as explained in our guide to occupational therapy CPD and its five interactive hours. Paramedicine's 30 contains eight interactive hours, the heaviest participatory share anywhere in the scheme. Osteopathy's 25 contains neither of those: it contains four hours of prescribed subject matter.

So an osteopath has more unconstrained hours than a paramedic both absolutely and proportionally, while facing a constraint no paramedic faces. Our comparison of why Ahpra CPD hours are not comparable across National Boards sets out each board's published position with its sub-quotas attached, which is the only form in which these figures can honestly be read against one another.

Why a prescribed-topic rule tells you what a regulator is worried about

A format-based sub-quota is essentially neutral about content. A regulator that demands five interactive hours is saying something about how practitioners learn best, not about what they need to know. A regulator that prescribes topics is doing the opposite: it has identified subject matter it believes registrants are not covering adequately when left to choose, and has reserved part of the annual obligation to force the issue.

That makes the approved-topic list the most informative document a prospective provider to this market can read, and it makes checking the current list each year more important than it would be for a format-based requirement. A format definition is stable; a list of topics a regulator is concerned about is not, and an activity that satisfied the four hours one year is not guaranteed to do so the next.

What a compliant record needs to show

Because the sub-quota is subject-based rather than format-based, the record has to identify which activities were on Board-approved topics. A log of 25 hours that does not flag those four cannot demonstrate compliance even where the activity was completed, and unlike an interactive hour — which a practitioner can usually describe after the fact — whether a course fell within an approved topic is a question best settled at the point of booking rather than reconstructed later.

The first aid qualification should be recorded separately, with its expiry date, since it does not belong in the hours tally and its renewal is the item most easily forgotten precisely because it is not annual.

One currency warning

A joint consultation covering fourteen National Boards, osteopathy among them, closed on 17 July 2026. The draft proposed moving the participating professions to a common requirement of 20 hours a year including five interactive hours. For osteopathy that would be a reduction in the total and a replacement of the Board-approved-topics requirement with a format-based one — a change of kind, not just of number.

Nothing has been approved. The standard in force is the 25-hour requirement described here, including the four topic-constrained hours. Check the dated standard on the Osteopathy Board of Australia's registration standards page before relying on any figure for a compliance or procurement decision.