The One Question Every Doctor Should Ask Themselves in December
December always arrives with its peculiar mix of relief and fatigue. The wards feel a little thinner, the rosters a little stranger, and the scent of end-of-year anticipation hangs in the air—mingled, for many of us, with the unmistakable twinge of CPD anxiety. It’s the season of gingerbread, half-written reflections, and the quiet dread of realising you still haven’t logged that activity from February. Every doctor in Australia knows that December brings with it a mandatory pause: a moment to look back at your CPD plan and reflect on whether it did what it was meant to do.
Most of us, if we’re honest, approach that reflection with the enthusiasm of a night shift on Christmas Eve. Many doctors still believe—sincerely—that this exercise is largely bureaucratic overreach, a box-ticking chore with no bearing on real patient care. And for those who feel CPD is pointless, the same complaint often emerges: “It doesn’t change anything I do.”
But perhaps that’s the wrong question. A more revealing, and slightly more uncomfortable one is: “What did I change this year?”
Because if the answer is nothing, the issue may not be that CPD is useless. It may simply be that you’re using it the wrong way.
The CPD Problem That Isn’t Really a Problem
CPD is a tool, much like a shovel - it doesn’t work if you’re using it incorrectly. But used properly, the same tool can reshape a garden, a pathway, even the foundations of a house. CPD is no different. A learning activity consumed passively, without intent or application, has little chance of influencing your practice. And if your year in medicine was busy—and of course it was—it’s easy for genuine insights to vanish beneath the noise of the clinical treadmill.
So when a doctor says CPD had no benefit, they may simply be reporting the experience of standing next to the shovel and expecting the hole to dig itself.
The reality is that it is highly unlikely there is nothing in your practice that could be improved. Just as unlikely is that nothing did improve! Medicine evolves too quickly, patients vary too widely, and humans—no matter how experienced—carry too many cognitive biases for any clinician to reach December unchanged. If nothing shifted, even slightly, something in the learning process failed to connect.
The December Reflection: More Than a Yearly Chore
Whether you enjoy it or not, the Medical Board requires you to review your CPD plan each December. It’s intended as a structured pause—a moment to consider whether the learning you planned was the learning you actually needed. It’s a little like taking down the Christmas decorations and discovering the things you meant to fix back in January: the frayed tinsel, the blown lights, the bauble still hanging on by a single thread.
This reflection is not merely an administrative hurdle. It’s an opportunity to ask:
Was my plan realistic?
Did it target the parts of my practice that genuinely needed attention?
Did I rely too heavily on passive content rather than seeking out the problems that were actually slowing me down or introducing risk?
Most importantly: did my learning translate into any real change?
What Counts as Change?
The word “change” in medicine often conjures images of major innovations—a new guideline, a dramatic shift in management, a sweeping overhaul of practice. But meaningful change is almost always smaller than that. It might be the way you start a difficult conversation, the phrasing you use when handing over a deteriorating patient, the extra moment you take to check for a cognitive bias before making a decision. It could be adopting a new tool, refining a workflow, or applying a small piece of evidence that shifts your threshold for ordering a test.
These tiny calibrations are the real engine of clinical improvement. They are subtle, often easy to miss, and yet cumulatively powerful. But because they’re small, they can be invisible—especially if you never look for them.
Why CPD Sometimes Leaves No Trace
There are many reasons CPD may feel like it did nothing. Sometimes the year is simply too overwhelming to allow proper integration of new skills. Sometimes the content chosen is convenient rather than relevant. Sometimes learning is completed passively—watched on a train, heard in the car, skimmed between ward rounds—leaving no room for reflection or application.
But sometimes the change did occur, and you just didn’t notice it.
The challenge is learning to recognise the micro-shifts in behaviour and judgement that accumulate quietly across a clinical year. This is where December’s reflection becomes a gift—one of those useful gifts, not the novelty stethoscope someone leaves in the staff tea room.
Doing CPD Smarter, Not Harder
If CPD isn’t shaping your practice, then the solution isn’t to do more CPD—it’s to do it differently. Start your learning with purpose. Target real pain points rather than filling hours. Turn each activity into something actionable by asking, “How will I use this next week?” Apply new knowledge quickly, before it evaporates. Involve a peer—discussing learning is one of the most reliable ways to make it stick. And when something changes in your practice, however small, document it. Not for the Medical Board, but for yourself. Seeing those changes on paper transforms CPD from obligation into evidence of growth.
This is what it means to use the tool properly. It’s not about digging harder—it’s about digging where it matters.
A Helpful Way to See What Changed
Sometimes the hardest part of reflection is simply knowing what to look for. Consider the quiet improvements: the decisions you made with more clarity, the conversations that went more smoothly, the moment you caught a near-miss because something you’d learned triggered caution. Think about whether a guideline shifted your approach, whether a QI idea nudged you to tidy up a workflow, or whether a podcast or article subtly influenced your thinking. Consider whether colleagues asked you for advice in an area you’ve been studying, or whether a patient interaction felt better because of something new you tried.
These are the breadcrumbs of learning—easy to overlook, but unmistakable once gathered together.
Returning to the Question
By the time you sit down to complete your end-of-year CPD reflection, the most important thing you can ask yourself is simple:
“What did I change this year?”
If nothing comes to mind, that isn’t an indictment of CPD—it’s an invitation to redesign the way you approach it. And if even one thing changed, even something small and quiet, then your CPD year did exactly what it was meant to do.
Next December, aim to look back and see not just a list of hours, but a trail of improvements—evidence that your practice is better, safer, clearer, or more compassionate than it was the year before.
That’s the real purpose of CPD - and December is the perfect time to notice it.