What the 8 AHPRA Professional Competencies Mean for Your Annual CPD Plan

5 min read · CPD & Compliance · PracticeReady.com.au

Every year, as a registered psychologist in Australia, you're required to complete continuing professional development and renew your registration with AHPRA. Most psychologists know this. Fewer realise that the Psychology Board has a very specific expectation about how that CPD should be planned — and it comes down to eight core competencies.

If you've been logging CPD hours without thinking much about which competency they address, you're not alone. But you may also be leaving yourself exposed at audit time, and missing out on CPD that genuinely moves your practice forward.

Here's what the eight competencies actually are, why they matter for your annual plan, and how to use them practically.

Why the Board Organised Things Around Competencies

The Psychology Board's Professional Competencies document describes what it calls threshold competency — the minimum level of knowledge, skills, and professional attributes required to practise safely and effectively as a psychologist in Australia.

Think of it as a floor, not a ceiling. The Board isn't asking you to be exceptional across all eight areas. It's asking you to stay above the line.

The reason this matters for CPD is explicit in the Board's own guidance: psychologists should "self-assess against the professional competencies to help plan their annual CPD goals each year." Your CPD isn't just about accumulating hours. It's about maintaining competency across your scope of practice — and being able to demonstrate that you've done so.

The 8 Core Competencies, Explained

Competency 1: Applies Scientific Knowledge of Psychology

This one is about staying evidence-based. The Board expects you to critically evaluate research, understand the limitations of different methodologies, and apply a scientifically informed approach to your practice and its outcomes.

What this looks like in CPD: Reading peer-reviewed journal articles, attending research-focused workshops, completing a postgraduate subject, or engaging with systematic reviews in your practice area.

Competency 2: Practises Ethically and Professionally

More than just knowing the Code of Ethics — this competency covers your ability to foresee ethical risks, manage dilemmas proactively, practise within the boundaries of your competence, and consult peers and supervisors when needed.

What this looks like in CPD: Ethics workshops, peer consultation groups, supervision (for registered psychologists too), and case-based learning that involves ethical complexity.

Competency 3: Exercises Professional Reflexivity, Deliberate Practice and Self-Care

This is one of the competencies that gets underrepresented in CPD plans. It covers your ability to critically evaluate your own practice, recognise your limits, reflect on how your own values and biases affect your work, and manage your wellbeing to sustain professional functioning.

The Board has intentionally strengthened this competency in recent years — it's no longer optional to think about.

What this looks like in CPD: Personal therapy, supervision focused on reflexivity, self-care planning, mindfulness or burnout prevention training, and deliberate practice activities like direct observation of your own sessions.

Competency 4: Conducts Psychological Assessments

This covers the full assessment process — selecting appropriate methods, administering and interpreting measures, formulating results, providing feedback, and managing the risks that come with assessment work. The Board emphasises that this must be culturally safe and relevant across the lifespan.

What this looks like in CPD: Training in specific assessment tools, workshops on assessment with particular populations, supervised case consultation on assessment formulation, or reading on culturally responsive assessment practices.

Competency 5: Conducts Psychological Interventions

Staying current with evidence-based interventions, selecting approaches that suit the client and context, evaluating client progress, and adapting as needed. Again, cultural safety and lifespan considerations are embedded here.

What this looks like in CPD: Training in specific therapeutic modalities (ACT, schema therapy, trauma-informed approaches), workshops on working with particular presentations, case consultation, or peer review of clinical outcomes.

Competency 6: Communicates and Relates to Others Effectively

This isn't just about rapport with clients. It includes communication with colleagues, other professions, referrers, and relevant others. Knowing when and how to refer, working collaboratively, and adapting your communication style to the context.

What this looks like in CPD: Interprofessional learning events, communication skills workshops, training in specific formats like telehealth or group work, or reflective supervision on working relationships.

Competency 7: Health Equity Approach — Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

The Board is unambiguous: this competency is relevant to every psychologist's scope of practice, regardless of whether you directly work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients. It requires knowledge of historical and political context, culturally safe practice, and trauma-aware and healing-informed care.

What this looks like in CPD: Cultural safety training, yarning circles or community engagement, supervision with a First Nations practitioner, reading on Aboriginal health frameworks, or attending culturally responsive practice workshops.

Competency 8: Health Equity Approach — People from Diverse Groups

Working without discrimination across all forms of diversity — age, race, ethnicity, language, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, and more. The Board uses the term cultural responsiveness deliberately: it's an ongoing process, not a box you tick once.

What this looks like in CPD: Training on working with LGBTQIA+ clients, refugee and asylum seeker mental health, culturally adapted interventions, or diversity and inclusion workshops.

The Gap Most Psychologists Have

Here's the honest reality: most psychologists have strong CPD coverage in Competencies 4 and 5 — the clinical bread and butter of assessment and intervention. They often have reasonable coverage in Competency 2 through ethics requirements.

But Competencies 3, 7, and 8 are frequently underdeveloped in annual CPD plans. These aren't soft optional extras. The Board expects coverage across all eight areas relevant to your scope of practice.

If you were audited today, could you point to CPD in the last 12 months that maps to each of these?

How to Actually Use the 8 Competencies in Your Planning

The practical approach is straightforward:

Step 1: Self-assess at the start of each registration year. Look at all 8 competencies and honestly rate where you feel strong versus where there are gaps relative to your current scope of practice.

Step 2: Set learning goals against the gaps. The Board's CPD portfolio template asks you to document your learning goals and the planned activities to meet them. These goals should trace back to specific competencies.

Step 3: Log each CPD activity against its competency. When you complete an activity, note which competency it addresses. This makes audit preparation straightforward rather than a last-minute scramble.

Step 4: Reflect with purpose. The Board distinguishes between a good reflection and an acceptable one. A good reflection explains what you learned, whether your learning goal was met, and — critically — how your practice will change as a result. "I attended a workshop and found it useful" doesn't meet the standard. "I will now do X differently when I encounter Y situation" does.

Step 5: Keep your evidence. For every activity, retain your evidence of completion — certificates, summaries, notes, receipts. The Board can ask for these if you're audited.

A Note for Provisional Psychologists

If you're completing the 5+1 internship pathway, the professional competencies are even more central to your work. Your supervised practice is specifically designed to help you demonstrate threshold competency across all eight areas. Your logbook entries and supervision discussions should be explicitly connected to these competencies — and a good supervisor will be helping you do exactly that.

The Bottom Line

The 8 AHPRA professional competencies aren't bureaucratic box-ticking. They represent a genuinely useful framework for thinking about your professional development as a whole person and practitioner — not just your clinical skills.

The psychologists who find CPD most meaningful are usually the ones who use it as an honest mirror: where am I strong, where am I avoiding growth, and what would actually make me a better practitioner this year?

The competencies give you a structure for that reflection. Your CPD plan is where you act on it.

PracticeReady helps you log CPD activities directly against the 8 AHPRA competencies, prompts you to write Board-compliant reflections, and shows you at a glance where your coverage is strong and where the gaps are. Start your free trial →

Tags: CPD, AHPRA, Professional Competencies, Psychology Registration, 5+1 Pathway, Provisional Psychologist, CPD Planning