Podiatry Board of Australia CPD: Why There Are Four Totals, Not Three

Australian podiatry CPD is usually described as tiered at 20, 30 or 40 hours. That is the arithmetic, but it is not how the standard is written, and the difference matters because the common framing leaves out a fourth case. The Podiatry Board of Australia sets one base figure and two add-ons that stack independently, which produces four possible annual totals rather than three.

The base: 20 hours, including five interactive

Every registrant other than those with non-practising registration starts at 20 hours of CPD a year, and the standard applies to podiatrists and podiatric surgeons alike. Inside that 20 sits a minimum of five hours in an interactive setting with other practitioners, and the activity has to focus on aspects of podiatry practice relevant to the registrant's own area of professional practice.

The two add-ons, and how they stack

A registrant whose registration is endorsed for scheduled medicines must complete an additional 10 hours a year related to the endorsement. A podiatric surgeon must complete an additional 20 hours a year related to that scope of practice. Neither replaces the base; both sit on top of it, and they are not mutually exclusive.

That gives four totals:

• 20 hours — podiatrist, general registration, no endorsement.
• 30 hours — podiatrist with an endorsement for scheduled medicines.
• 40 hours — podiatric surgeon without an endorsement.
• 50 hours — podiatric surgeon who also holds an endorsement for scheduled medicines.

The 50-hour case is the one that falls out of the usual description, and it is a real registrant category rather than a theoretical one. Anyone building a staff tracker from a three-tier model will record a dually-qualified surgeon as compliant ten hours before they are.

The interactive floor does not scale with the add-ons

This is the detail most likely to be got wrong in the other direction. The five-hour interactive minimum sits inside the base 20 hours. The additional 10 and the additional 20 are each required only to include a range of activities from the categories in the Board's guidelines; no separate interactive minimum is stated for either.

So a podiatric surgeon completing 40 hours carries one five-hour interactive floor, not two. A cautious reading that doubled the participatory requirement alongside the hours would over-buy, and in a market where interactive activity is the scarcer and more expensive kind, that is a real cost rather than a harmless margin.

Resuscitation training sits outside the hours entirely

Separately from the CPD hours, podiatrists must complete training covering cardiopulmonary resuscitation, management of anaphylaxis and use of an automated external defibrillator. Podiatric surgeons must have completed training in advanced life support from an approved training organisation. Neither counts toward the hours total, and the Board treats the requirement as excluded from its pro rata arrangements.

The practical effect is that a podiatrist registering part-way through a period gets a reduced hours obligation but no reduction in the resuscitation requirement. An employer costing a new starter should treat these as two separate lines, because one scales with the calendar and the other does not.

Pro rata applies to each component separately, and nothing rolls over

A registrant joining part-way through a registration period completes a proportion of the hours, and the add-ons pro-rate independently of the base. A surgical podiatrist registered in May, for example, completes half the base hours for that period, and an endorsement granted in May brings its own separately pro-rated share.

Excess hours cannot be carried forward. The Board is explicit that a registrant who exceeds the minimum cannot roll the surplus into the following year, so a heavy year buys nothing for a light one. Records must be kept for at least five years.

How this compares across the National Boards

Podiatry's stacking structure is unusual. Most boards that vary a requirement do it with a single uplift. Optometrists move from 20 hours to 30 with a scheduled medicines endorsement and no second add-on, as set out in our guide to the Optometry Board's endorsement uplift. At the other end of the scheme, the Physiotherapy Board sets 20 hours with no sub-quota at all, as explained in our guide to physiotherapy CPD and the absent interactive floor.

Put podiatry's headline next to those and the comparison breaks immediately, because 40 for a podiatric surgeon and 40 hypothetically for anyone else are not the same obligation: podiatry's contains a specialty-linked component and a fixed five-hour floor regardless of total. Our comparison of why Ahpra CPD hours are not comparable across National Boards sets out the published positions with their sub-quotas attached.

One currency warning

A joint consultation covering fourteen National Boards, podiatry among them, closed on 17 July 2026. The draft retained the base figure and the endorsement add-on but proposed a minimum of 10 interactive hours inside the surgical add-on, which would be a tightening on the position described above. Nothing has been approved and the standard in force is the one set out here. Check the current published standard on the Podiatry Board of Australia's registration standards page before relying on any figure for a compliance decision.