Thirty hours per year. That is the minimum CPD requirement the General Osteopathic Council sets for all registered osteopaths in the UK, and it applies throughout your career regardless of how long you have been in practice or whether you work full-time or part-time.
Like many regulatory CPD requirements, the headline figure is only the starting point. The more useful questions are what those 30 hours can look like in practice, what the GOsC expects from your records, and how to build habits that make the annual requirement feel manageable rather than stressful.
Breaking Down 30 Hours
Across a 12-month year, 30 hours works out to 2.5 hours per month. For most osteopaths in active practice, this is not an imposing commitment — the challenge is usually not finding the time to learn, but being systematic enough to record what you do.
A realistic annual CPD profile for an osteopath might look something like this: two or three substantive online courses or workshops across the year totalling perhaps 12 to 15 hours, regular reading of relevant research with brief written reflections adding three to four hours, participation in peer case discussions or a study group adding three to four hours, and a conference or professional body event adding five to six hours. That combination gets you comfortably past 30 hours with variety across formal and informal learning.
What the GOsC Counts as CPD
The GOsC recognises a broad range of learning activities. Formal learning — accredited courses, workshops, webinars, postgraduate study, conferences — tends to generate clear evidence through certificates and attendance records. Informal learning — peer discussion, journal reading, reflective practice, supervision, teaching, mentoring — is equally valid but requires you to create your own records.
An activity does not need to be formally accredited to count. If it involves genuine learning relevant to your osteopathic practice and you can document it, it qualifies. That said, accreditation from an independent body like The CPD Group is a useful quality signal when choosing formal CPD providers, and the documentation it generates makes portfolio management straightforward.
What Does Not Count
Treating patients does not count as CPD, however valuable the clinical experience may be. Patient care is professional activity, not structured learning. The same applies to administrative work, practice management, travel, and business development.
Keeping Records That Meet the GOsC Standard
For each CPD activity, your records should include the date and duration, a description of the activity, and a reflection — what you learned and how it connects to your osteopathic practice.
Reflection does not need to be lengthy. A short paragraph per activity is sufficient. What matters is that it is specific and genuine: what you engaged with, what you took from it, and whether it affects how you think about or approach your work.
The most practical approach is to update your CPD record at or shortly after each activity. Notes written at the time are more credible and more useful than records reconstructed from memory months later.
The Difference Between Having 30 Hours and Having Good Records
Many osteopaths complete more than 30 hours of genuine learning in any given year without formally recording it. The regulatory obligation is not just to do the CPD — it is to document it. An undocumented activity, however Valuable, cannot be included in your CPD record.
This is why building record-keeping habits is as important as building learning habits. The two should happen together: when you finish a course, log it. When you have a substantive conversation with a colleague about a clinical question, make a brief note. When you read a paper that shifts your thinking, record what you took from it.
A portfolio built this way, over the course of a year, is ready for any GOsC quality assurance review without the need for last-minute reconstruction.