Is your continuing professional development (CPD) record in chaos? Are pieces of paper, certificates, literature searches and reading lists scattered over your desk? Do you have notes stuffed in drawers somewhere, or crumpled up in a shoebox under the bed?
If so, i-folio – the new electronic portfolio (ePortfolio) for RCM members – is definitely for you.
Even if you are organised, it can help by storing your CPD records more efficiently and effectively and providing a place in which to record your reflective practice notes.
I-folio is an entirely private space for members to upload records and write in an online journal area.
This is all stored safely in one place online and is accessible to members from wherever they log on to the RCM website.
I-folio can also be used to develop your CV and build a web page to showcase your
work and share experiences with colleagues.
PrepWhile i-folio has been developed for both midwives and maternity support workers (MSWs), midwives will hopefully use it to meet the NMC’s post registration education and practice (CPD) standard.
The Prep (CPD) standard requires the registrant to have undertaken and recorded their CPD over the three years prior to the renewal of their registration.
All midwives and nurses have been required to comply with this standard since April 1995. To comply, the midwife or nurse must:
✻ Undertake at least 35 hours of learning activity relevant to their practice during the three years prior to the renewal of registration
✻ Maintain a personal professional profile of learning activity.
I-folio can support you with maintaining a personal professional profile of your learning activity.
The type of CPD activity is entirely up to the registrant as the NMC believes that they are best placed to recognise what their learning needs are and how best to satisfy them.
Activities could be attending a study day, conducting a literature search, reflecting on a journal article, shadowing a senior colleague or completing an e-learning module.
All of these activities can be recorded in i-folio and, if required, they can also be shown to others through i-folio.
ReflectionWhether you are a student midwife, an experienced midwife or an MSW, an important part of learning is reflection. This could be reflecting on a clinical experience , a research article or even a colleague’s blog. I-folio provides you with a space to do this.
It is not just about thinking, or brooding on a topic, but a way of critically analysing your own practice, the context in which it happens and the activities you engage in, as well as reviewing how the new knowledge you will have gained can be assimilated into your future practice.
You can have more than one reflective journal so you might want to reflect on day-to-day issues and also have a more formal place for reflection that will support further learning.
It is easy to add additional journals to your reflective area and, as it is a private space, no-one will be able to see what you have written.
There are many tools to assist you in reflecting, and the principles are to:
✻ Be open-minded
✻ Have an absorbed interest
✻ Be able to take responsibility in facing consequences
✻ Challenge yourself as well as others, to look at old and new knowledge and practice, to see all aspects of what happened, and to question assumptions that were in place.
Displaying your portfolioFinally, i-folio provides a means of displaying aspects of your portfolio to others. You may want to do this for a variety of reasons. For example, you might:
✻ Have been to a conference or an event and want to share photos, presentations and other information with colleagues
✻ Have undertaken a piece of research and want colleagues to view and comment on the results
✻ Be applying for a job and want your prospective employers to see some of the work you have been involved with
✻ Want to provide evidence of the CPD that you have undertaken together with a record of your reflective learning.
Your web page can contain any of the elements that you have uploaded or included in other areas of i-folio, such as the CV area or the files area.
Log on to the RCM website at:
www.rcm.org.uk/ifolio to start your online portfolio or log into i-learn to follow the i-folio course.
RCM CommunitiesWill i-folio make it easier for you to record your CPD progress? Join in at:
http://communities.rcm.org.uk
