CPDCourses.com provides flexible Nursing CPD for nurses who want to develop knowledge relevant to their current scope of practice. For nurses registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), CPD also forms part of the evidence required for revalidation.
You can explore the full CPD course catalogue or browse the dedicated Healthcare course category for learning in areas such as infection prevention, patient-centred communication, medication management and healthcare practice.
Choosing suitable CPD requires more than collecting course certificates. Registered nurses need to consider whether learning is relevant to their scope of practice, how it relates to the NMC Code, whether participatory learning requirements are being met and what evidence should be retained for revalidation.
Nursing CPD is Continuing Professional Development undertaken to maintain or develop knowledge and skills relevant to nursing practice.
Learning needs can arise from:
For a registered nurse, professional development should be relevant to their actual scope of practice.
A community nurse, theatre nurse, mental-health nurse and nurse manager may therefore have very different development priorities.
For a broader introduction to the subject, see our guide explaining what CPD means.
This page is principally intended for registered nurses seeking professional-development guidance and suitable online learning.
It may also be useful to:
However, completing a general online Nursing CPD course does not qualify someone to register or practise as a nurse.
Becoming a registered nurse in the UK requires the appropriate NMC-approved education and registration process.
For nurses on the NMC register, CPD is not simply optional professional enrichment.
Under the current NMC revalidation requirements, you must complete 35 hours of CPD relevant to your scope of practice during the three-year period since your registration was last renewed, or since joining the register.
Of those 35 hours:
At least 20 hours must involve participatory learning.
This is a three-year requirement rather than 35 hours every year.
The distinction matters when planning your professional development.
Participatory learning involves interaction with one or more other professionals.
It can take place:
You do not need to be physically in the same room for learning to be participatory.
The important feature is professional interaction.
A self-paced online course completed independently may support relevant CPD learning, but nurses should not automatically record independent study as participatory learning simply because it was delivered online.
No.
The NMC does not prescribe one fixed list of courses that every registered nurse must complete for revalidation.
Instead, CPD must be relevant to your scope of practice.
That means course selection should begin with your professional responsibilities and development needs.
For example:
The relevance of the learning is more important than simply choosing a course labelled "Nursing CPD".
A practical starting question is:
Consider:
This prevents CPD from becoming a disconnected collection of certificates.
The NMC Code sets the professional standards of practice and behaviour that registered nurses, midwives and nursing associates must uphold.
Its four broad themes are:
Your CPD record should identify the part of the Code most relevant to the activity.
This helps connect professional learning with actual nursing responsibilities.
The exact development priorities differ between nurses, but several broad areas commonly warrant review.
Infection prevention remains relevant across many clinical and care environments.
Development may cover:
The Infection Prevention and Control Certificate is currently listed as a 30-hour online course covering infection-control foundations, applied infection control and surveillance, outbreak response and quality improvement.
Whether some or all of this learning is appropriate for your revalidation record depends on its relevance to your scope of practice and how you undertake the activity.
Communication affects assessment, consent, care planning, multidisciplinary working and the patient's experience of care.
Useful development can include:
The Healthcare catalogue currently includes Patient-Centred Care & Communication CPD as a focused learning option.
Communication development should be applied alongside professional standards, local policy and the requirements of the individual clinical situation.
Medication-related responsibilities require particular care because mistakes can have significant consequences.
Relevant development may include:
The Medication Management in Health and Social Care CPD programme covers medication safety, legal duties, storage, administration, monitoring, documentation and continuous improvement.
A general online medication course does not itself authorise a person to administer medicines or replace employer competency assessment, local policy, clinical supervision or profession-specific requirements.
Nurses may encounter adults at risk of abuse, neglect or exploitation.
Development can include:
The Safeguarding Adults Level 3 CPD course provides related theoretical development.
Nurses should continue to follow current statutory guidance, local safeguarding procedures and employer requirements when responding to real concerns.
Professionals working with children, young people or families may require development appropriate to their role and level of safeguarding responsibility.
The Safeguarding Children Level 3 CPD course covers safeguarding principles, responsibilities and responses to abuse, neglect and exploitation.
Course completion should not be treated as automatic evidence that an individual satisfies every employer's role-specific safeguarding competency requirement.
Technical knowledge is only one component of professional nursing.
Development can also address:
The Safeguarding & Dignity in Care CPD course provides related learning for health and care environments.
Nurses can encounter complex questions involving:
The Ethical Laws in Healthcare course provides general development around ethics, healthcare law, safeguarding and decision-making.
Learning about healthcare law does not replace legal advice, organisational policy or current professional guidance when dealing with a specific case.
Clinical deterioration is an important patient-safety issue.
Development priorities may include:
The appropriate practical training depends on role, setting and employer requirements.
Online theoretical CPD can support knowledge, but it should not be presented as a substitute for supervised clinical competency assessment where practical competence is required.
Professional nursing requires accurate, appropriate records.
Development may address:
CPD can help nurses revisit principles and identify weaknesses, but documentation must ultimately follow current professional standards, applicable law and organisational systems.
Professional practice evolves as research, guidance and clinical evidence change.
CPD can involve:
Formal courses are therefore only one part of Nursing CPD.
The NMC allows nurses to decide which CPD activities are most useful for their development, provided the revalidation requirements are satisfied.
Nurses with supervisory, management, educational or clinical-leadership responsibilities may identify development needs around:
Leadership learning should be selected according to actual responsibilities rather than on the assumption that every nurse needs the same management training.
Digital systems increasingly influence healthcare delivery.
Relevant development may include:
Nurses using digital or AI-supported systems should understand their own accountability.
Technology can assist with information processing and clinical workflows, but it does not remove the professional's responsibility to work within competence, use appropriate judgement and escalate concerns.
The Healthcare course category provides a range of online learning options relevant to health and care practice.
Selected courses include:
The wider Healthcare, Nursing & Nutrition CPD hub can also be used to explore adjacent healthcare professional-development subjects.
Choose learning because it addresses an identified need in your scope of practice, not simply because it is healthcare-related.
Online learning can contribute to the NMC CPD requirement when it is relevant to your scope of practice and meets the applicable revalidation requirements.
However, online does not automatically mean participatory.
If you complete a self-directed course alone, you should not assume that its study hours qualify as participatory hours.
Participatory learning requires interaction with one or more other professionals.
When planning your 35 hours, distinguish carefully between:
You need at least 20 participatory hours within the overall 35-hour requirement.
No external course certificate should be presented as automatically approved or accepted by the NMC simply because it is described as CPD accredited.
The NMC's requirement is based on relevant CPD and appropriate evidence, including the participatory-learning requirement.
A course certificate can provide evidence that learning was completed, but you remain responsible for determining:
This distinction is important when comparing online nursing CPD courses.
CPD accreditation and professional nursing regulation serve different purposes.
A CPD-accredited course may provide structured professional learning and evidence of completion.
It does not automatically provide:
For additional background, see What Is CPD Accreditation?.
If an employer, regulator or other organisation needs to recognise a particular learning activity, confirm its requirements directly.
A certificate can be useful evidence within a professional-development record.
It may document:
But a certificate alone does not complete the NMC revalidation CPD requirement.
Nurses must maintain the required CPD records and be able to explain the relationship between their learning and professional practice.
The NMC requires accurate CPD records.
For each relevant activity, your record should include:
Keeping this information at the time of learning is usually more reliable than reconstructing it near your revalidation date.
Avoid recording only:
Completed infection-control course – 30 hours.
A more useful record explains the professional context:
I reviewed infection-prevention practice because my current role involves regular contact with patients at increased infection risk. The learning refreshed transmission and outbreak-management principles and prompted me to review how these relate to current local procedures. I have linked the activity to the relevant parts of the Code and retained the course evidence.
Only record outcomes that genuinely occurred.
The purpose of reflection is to document learning and its relevance, not to create evidence retrospectively.
Nurses should not treat the 35-hour CPD requirement as the whole revalidation process.
Revalidation includes additional requirements beyond CPD.
Plan your revalidation using current NMC guidance rather than relying solely on a course provider or certificate.
Nurses approaching renewal should always check the NMC directly for the current Code, revalidation requirements and official templates before making decisions about a future cycle.
A useful selection process is:
Consider the people you care for, the setting in which you work and your current responsibilities.
Use evidence such as:
The best activity may be:
Check whether you still need participatory hours before selecting further independent learning.
Ask what should change in your knowledge, judgement or practice.
Record the activity while the details are fresh.
Do not leave all professional development until the end of your revalidation cycle.
A practical approach is to review development needs regularly.
Consider maintaining a simple record of:
This creates a continuing professional-development cycle and makes it easier to identify whether your learning remains relevant.
It also helps prevent an important revalidation problem: completing enough total learning hours but discovering too late that insufficient hours meet the participatory requirement.
Registered nurses must currently complete 35 hours of relevant CPD during each three-year revalidation period. At least 20 of those hours must involve participatory learning.
No. The current NMC requirement is 35 hours across the three-year period, not 35 hours each year.
Participatory learning involves interaction with one or more other professionals. This can occur physically or virtually through appropriate activities such as workshops, conferences, interactive training or relevant professional group learning.
Not simply because it is online. Independent self-directed learning generally does not satisfy the participatory element unless the activity includes qualifying interaction with other professionals.
They should not be treated as automatically approved by the NMC. Nurses need to assess relevance to their scope of practice, record appropriate hours and satisfy all NMC evidence and participatory-learning requirements.
The NMC does not prescribe a particular type of CPD for revalidation. Nurses decide what development is useful and relevant to their professional practice while meeting the regulator's requirements.
Keep evidence of the activity and record the method, topic, relevance to practice, dates, hours, participatory hours where applicable and the relevant part of the NMC Code.
No. A CPD completion certificate is not an NMC-approved pre-registration nursing qualification and does not provide registration or permission to practise as a nurse.
Potentially, yes, when it is relevant to your scope of practice and properly recorded. Whether particular learning satisfies an employer's mandatory-training requirement is a separate question.
A theoretical online medication course can support knowledge development but should not be treated as a substitute for any practical competency assessment, supervision or employer authorisation required for the role.
Registered nurses should use the current Nursing and Midwifery Council revalidation guidance as the authoritative source for UK registration requirements.
Effective Nursing CPD starts with your patients, responsibilities, scope of practice and professional-development needs.
Identify the learning that is genuinely relevant, distinguish participatory from independent CPD, retain appropriate evidence and connect your development with the NMC Code.
Browse the Healthcare course category for relevant online learning, and use the Healthcare CPD requirements guide for further background on professional development across healthcare.
