From learning portfolios to personal development plans

Abstract

Previous articles have focused on the need to recognise and implement modern educational theory in practice, to make learning a continuous, lifelong activity, and to relate learning to outcome measures. For each of these, the medical practitioner has to develop the appropriate tools for these concepts to be implemented and to be successful. But how do practitioners appraise what they have been involved with or map what they intend to carry out in the future, or make themselves ready for a future when accreditation and re-accreditation are realistic outcome measures? In this article we put forward, for discussion, the use of modified learning portfolios, which, when combined with a personal development plan, act as an educationally directed developmental tool to identify educational and training needs, as well as to record individual progress and success. We will draw a comparison between this type of portfolio and the standard curriculum vitae, whilst demonstrating the potential for a learning portfolio to be a useful adjunct to a curriculum vitae.