On graduation you become a Member of the Alliance of Private Sector Practitioners (MPSPract) for your public liability and medical malpractice insurance (membership fee and insurance premium will be required at this stage).

Our graduates (DipCFHP) build, run and enjoy successful practices. How do we know? Because we meet them regularly at functions such as the Open Clinical Forums and Annual Seminars of the Alliance of Private Sector Practitioners, through which our graduates obtain professional guidance, professional liability insurance and continuing professional development. This allows social interaction and keeps colleagues together as one happy, supportive family.

ALLIANCE OF PRIVATE SECTOR PRACTITIONER'S STATEMENT ON ITS CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY

The Alliance has always promoted CPD and has always taken pride in staging and producing innovative quality presentations and products by which practitioners can develop themselves professionally.

We totally believe that CPD is neccessary as a principle, and have laboured long and hard to promote CPD as essential to practice. As a recognised and established professional organisation representing both registrants and independant practitioners, the legitimate business of the Alliance is exactly the pursuit of practice and practitioner development. Since the Alliance is not funded by public money, it uses member's subscriptions to produce CPD opportunities for its members.

Alliance members earn a minimum of 40 CPD points per year, and many accrue considerably more than this. The points system helps to define the required level of activity. Certainly our insurers would not wish to provide cover to those who would persistently and deliberately avoid such activity. Our members (all of our members) follow CPD without coercion because it is part of their personal practice outlook and constitutes a legitimate and neccessary business undertaking and expense.

Some training institutions have expressed the notion that it is not right to say that CPD must be followed. We repeat in the clearest of terms that the Alliance considers CPD as absolutely essential to safe and effective practice, and those extended publishing-house training centres that make any other suggestion on their websites deserve condemnation for such unprofessional misdirection. *Note that persons 'trained' at these centres are not accepted for Alliance membership until they have undertaken further training (incurring further expense on top of their 'cheaper' course costs) to be able to meet acceptable standards.

Those who do understand correctly will acknowledge that CPD should come from a range of pursuits and be achieved by means of a spectrum of activities. The Alliance recognises appropriate (relevant) CPD from any reputable source. The 'company store' mentality is certainly not that which is practised or applied by the Alliance. Alliance members often show preference for Alliance CPD because it is set at the right level for practice and has direct clinical application.