The Personal Development Plan

The Personal Development Plan is intended to allow a trainee to break down training into smaller chunks and focus on specific areas of the curriculum. It can be found on the Personal Development Plan (PDP) page of the trainee's portfolio.

 

The PDP is a rolling document which does not have to be linked to any particular training level or post. In this fashion it can be used to set short-, mid- or long-term goals.

 

The PDP is made up of entries generically referred to as PDP Items. There is currently just one template available for PDP Items - the learning objective. This template standardises each entry in the PDP requiring a description of what the objective is and how a trainee plans to achieve it.

 

New learning objectives can be set at any time.

 

When creating learning objectives it is useful to think about which curriculum competencies the learning objective is intending to demonstrate. Objectives should not be overly broad, nor so narrow that they are simply a facsimile of an individual competence. They should describe achievable goals, which encompass related competencies. Once the details of the PDP item have been entered, the learning objective can be linked to the competencies it will demonstrate once the trainee has taken part in relevant activities and recorded them in their portfolio. Add a PDP Item & Map it to a Competency.

 

The PDP page by default shows all a trainee's active PDP items in a list. When a trainee has linked a PDP item to a competency or a PDP Item has been commented on this will be reflected here.

Viewing the PDP Item reveals more information, including links to any mapped activities. It will be clear which learning objectives have sufficient evidence, and which need more work. In this fashion the PDP can be used to help drive a trainee's learning.

Once a trainee is satisfied they have enough evidence for a learning objective, it can be marked as complete. This will set the end-date of the objective and remove it from view on a trainee's active PDP.

Completed PDP Items can still be viewed, re-opened and reviewed if necessary.