When chiropractors think about CPD, they often think about courses, conferences, and certificates. These formal learning activities are the most visible part of professional development — but they are not the only part that counts toward your GCC 30-hour annual requirement. Informal CPD is equally valid, and for many practitioners it accounts for a significant proportion of their annual total.
What the GCC Means by Informal CPD
The GCC's CPD framework distinguishes between formal learning — structured activities delivered by an external provider — and informal learning, which encompasses any learning activity you undertake independently or in a professional peer context. Both count fully toward your 30 hours. The GCC does not prescribe a ratio of formal to informal, nor does it cap informal hours.
What defines a valid informal CPD activity is not its setting or format, but its substance. The GCC asks three questions about any CPD activity: Was it genuinely relevant to your clinical practice? Did you engage with it as learning — meaning it went beyond routine professional activity? Can you document it with reflection and, where applicable, evidence?
Activities That Count as Informal CPD
Reading research papers and clinical guidelines is one of the most common forms of informal CPD among chiropractors. A new systematic review on spinal manipulation, updated guidelines from a professional body, or a meta-analysis relevant to a patient population you treat — all of these constitute genuine learning if you read them critically and can describe what you took from them. The key is not simply reading, but engaging with the material in a way that could influence your practice.
Peer discussion and case review are another well-established category. Clinical conversations with colleagues — whether in a formal peer group or informally between practitioners — can constitute CPD if they have genuine learning content. Discussing a complex case, comparing approaches to a clinical challenge, or reviewing a recent guideline together are all valid. What transforms a professional conversation into CPD is your ability to document what was discussed and what you learned from it.
Reflective practice in its broader sense counts too. Reviewing your own cases, reflecting on outcomes that surprised you, or thinking through how you might approach a particular presentation differently are legitimate learning activities. Some practitioners maintain a clinical reflective journal for this purpose, which also serves as ready-made documentation.
Teaching and mentoring contribute to informal CPD from the educator's side. Preparing and delivering a case presentation to a colleague, supervising a student, or explaining a clinical concept to a peer — these activities require you to consolidate your own knowledge and often expose gaps you were not aware of. They count as your CPD, not just the learner's.
What Does Not Count as Informal CPD
The line between informal CPD and routine professional activity matters here. Reading your emails, attending a practice meeting about rotas or business matters, or completing administrative paperwork are not CPD. Treating patients is professional activity, not CPD, even if it indirectly develops your skills over time.
Social media browsing, however professionally themed, is difficult to count as CPD without deliberate engagement. Skimming a thread or watching a short video in passing does not constitute structured learning. If you watch a substantive recorded lecture or work through a well-curated educational resource online, that can count — but passive consumption generally does not.
How to Document Informal CPD
This is where informal CPD differs most from formal learning. A completed course comes with a certificate. Informal CPD comes with whatever records you create yourself, which means documentation is your responsibility.
For each informal CPD activity, record the date and approximate duration, describe what the activity was and what prompted it, and write a brief reflection — what you learned, how it relates to your practice, and whether it changes or confirms any aspect of how you work. A few sentences to a short paragraph is sufficient. Lengthy or formal prose is not required.
Keep these records contemporaneously — at the time you do the activity, or as close to it as possible. Records written months after the fact are harder to defend in an audit and carry less evidential weight.
Informal CPD in an Audit
If the GCC audits your CPD declaration and your portfolio includes informal learning hours, the auditor will look for plausibility and coherence. A portfolio where peer discussion accounts for five or six hours across the year, supported by brief dated notes, is entirely credible. A portfolio where thirty hours of informal CPD suddenly appeared in August with no contemporaneous records is not.
Well-documented informal CPD can actually make for a more compelling portfolio than a stack of certificates alone. It demonstrates genuine professional engagement — a practitioner who reads, reflects, and talks with colleagues about their work, not just one who signs up for courses.