In order to develop your professional practice, you have to be proactive, take charge and change the way you think about your career. 

This new series aims to enable you to provide safe and effective care by helping you to recognise your skills, knowledge and understanding of professional behaviours. This month, consider how reflection and feedback can support you to identify and achieve goals and enable a meaningful change in practice.

Personal development planning

Personal development planning is a structured way to start:

• First, aim to understand yourself by reflecting, and set meaningful goals
• Next, define these goals in terms of what you want to achieve and the steps you need to take to get there. This means setting SMART objectives
• Finally, identify gaps in your knowledge, skills and experience, and create an action plan to fill them to help move towards your end goal.¹