The Quiet Problem With CPD: We Do It Alone

Modern medical CPD is peculiar.  We practise medicine in teams, yet most CPD happens in isolation.

We sit at home watching modules, ticking boxes, uploading certificates, writing reflections into empty text boxes that nobody else will ever read. Even when the learning is good, it is oddly detached from the social reality of medicine — the corridor conversations, the quick debriefs, the “what would you have done?” moments that actually shape how we think.

Medicine has always been a collective profession. Junior doctors learn by watching registrars. Registrars refine themselves by being challenged by consultants. Consultants stay sharp by being questioned by juniors. But our CPD systems were built as if learning were a solitary administrative task rather than a shared professional practice.

Osler’s new Community platform is designed to bring that missing social layer back into CPD.

Not as a chat room. Not as social media. But as a structured, professional space where doctors can think together.

Why Community Matters for Professional Learning

Decades of educational research have shown that adults do not learn best by passively consuming information. We learn when we explain our thinking, compare our reasoning with others, get feedback, and see how our peers approach the same problems differently. In healthcare, this effect is even stronger, because clinical judgement is not just knowledge — it is pattern recognition, uncertainty management, and ethical reasoning developed through dialogue.

This is why case discussions, morbidity and mortality meetings, ward rounds, and handovers are so powerful. They force us to articulate what we think and confront what we may be missing.

Yet almost all CPD platforms today are built around content delivery rather than shared sense-making. They provide libraries, not conversations.

Osler Communities are designed to change that.

The First Community: A Shared CPD Space

At launch, every Osler member will have access to a public CPD Community.

This will be a place where doctors can post questions, reflections, cases, articles, frustrations, ideas, and insights related to learning, clinical practice, and professional development. Members will be able to comment, ask questions, share CPD ideas, upload files, link to resources, share images or short videos, and build threads that grow over time.

This creates something quietly radical: a living CPD commons.

Instead of one-way modules, you get evolving conversations. Instead of static resources, you get collective interpretation. Instead of solitary reflection, you get peer-visible thinking.

A junior doctor might post about struggling with breaking bad news. A GP might share how they frame those conversations. A palliative care consultant might add nuance. Suddenly, a CPD activity becomes a multi-disciplinary dialogue that none of them could have created alone.

And critically, this learning is not abstract — it can be linked directly into CPD goals, reflections, Reviewing Performance, and Measuring Outcomes within Osler.

Your CPD stops being something you upload after the fact, and starts becoming something you live inside.

Craft Groups: Learning With People Who Do What You Do

After launch, Osler will introduce craft-based Communities.

These will be spaces for specific professional identities — junior doctors, GPs, cardiologists, surgical assistants, rural generalists, educators, researchers, and more. These are not marketing segments; they are cognitive tribes. The way a junior doctor experiences CPD is different from how a cardiologist does. Their uncertainty, their learning needs, and their professional risks are different.

Craft communities allow people to speak in the shorthand of their own work.

A junior doctor can ask questions they would never ask in front of a consultant. A proceduralist can share technical tips. A GP can discuss diagnostic ambiguity without feeling judged. These spaces allow both vulnerability and sophistication, which is where real learning lives.

Over time, these communities become repositories of lived clinical wisdom, not just content libraries.

Member-Created Groups: From Audience to Network

The real power comes when smaller, member-created groups are enabled.

This is where Osler Communities move beyond being a forum and become an infrastructure for professional collaboration.

Doctors will be able to create private or semi-private groups for mentoring, peer supervision, study groups, exam preparation, journal clubs, audit teams, quality improvement projects, research collaboration, or reflective practice. A rural GP could form a peer support group with three others across the country. A hospital department could create a shared learning space. A registrar could build a study hall around a fellowship exam.

These groups can support structured activities that map directly to CPD: case review, peer feedback, observed skills, outcome tracking, and reflective discussion. This is how CPD becomes embedded in practice instead of sitting on top of it.

Remote supervision, for example, suddenly becomes possible. A doctor refreshing basic life support could upload a video for peer or supervisor feedback. A quality improvement group could review audit data together. A mentoring pair could track goals and outcomes inside a shared space.

These are not theoretical possibilities — they are the building blocks of modern professional learning.

Finding Your People

One of the most isolating experiences in medicine is feeling like you are the only one who thinks a certain way, struggles with a certain issue, or wants to pursue a certain path.

Osler Communities will allow members to find others based on interests, roles, and engagement, and message them directly. This transforms the CPD Home from a platform into a network.

Over time, this enables organic mentorship, collaboration, and career development in ways no traditional CPD system can provide. The person who helps you reframe a case today may become the person who supports your career tomorrow.

A Safer Space Than the Internet

Unlike public social media, Osler Communities are restricted to verified doctors and healthcare professionals. This matters.

It means conversations can be honest without being reckless, nuanced without being performative, and professional without being stiff. It allows real discussion of uncertainty, ethics, mistakes, and growth — the things that actually make doctors better — without the noise and risk of public platforms.

CPD as a Social Practice

What Osler is building is not just a forum. It is a recognition that learning in medicine is social, iterative, and relational.

CPD does not really happen when you watch a video. It happens when you discuss what it means, compare it to your experience, try something different, and then talk about what changed.

Communities make that cycle practical.

When doctors think together, they improve together. When CPD becomes collective, it becomes meaningful. And when learning becomes embedded in a professional network, it stops feeling like compliance and starts feeling like personal and professional growth.

Osler Communities are where that shift begins.