Professional Performance Framework

Patients in Australia trust their doctors and expect safe care from them. The Medical Board of Australia has built a Professional Performance Framework to support doctors to practise competently and ethically throughout their working lives.

The Professional Performance Framework supports doctors to take responsibility for their own performance and encourages the profession to raise professional standards and build a positive, respectful culture in medicine that is good for everyone.

The Board’s Professional Performance Framework is evidence-based, integrated and builds on existing initiatives. It is being implemented progressively, with some elements already in place or only requiring fine tuning, and others involving significant planning, consultation and development.

Major changes relate to CPD through a revised CPD registration standard and health checks for late career doctors, to support ongoing safe practice.

Download the Board’s Professional performance framework

• Building a professional performance framework (260 KB,PDF), Word version (140 KB,DOCX)

Five pillars of the Professional Performance Framework

The Professional Performance Framework has five pillars:

1. Strengthened Continuing Professional Development
   All doctors will:
   • have a CPD home and participate in its CPD program 
   • do CPD that is relevant to their scope of practice
   • base their CPD on a personal professional development plan
   • do at least 50 hours of CPD per year, that includes a mix of:
     • reviewing performance
     • measuring outcomes, and
     • educational activities.
2. Active assurance of safe practice
   • The Board will:
     • identify risks to patient safety and define the principles for screening those at risk, and
     • identify practitioners at risk of poor performance and managing that risk.
   • Increasing age is a known risk factor for poor performance. The Board is proposing
     • to require practitioners to have peer review and health checks at the age of 70 and three yearly thereafter, and
     • the outcome of health checks and peer reviews is not reported to the Board unless there is serious risk to patients.
   • Professional isolation is a known risk factor. The Board is proposing to develop guidance to help practitioners identify the hallmarks of professional isolation and manage the risk.
   • The Board expects that the vast majority of doctors with identified risk factors will demonstrate their ability to provide safe care to patients and remain in active clinical practice.
3. Strengthened assessment and management of medical practitioners with multiple substantiated complaints
   • The Board will require practitioners with multiple substantiated complaints to participate in formal peer review of performance.
4. Guidance to support practitioners
   • The Board will continue to develop and publish clear, relevant and contemporary professional standards to support good medical practice. These include:
     • Good medical practice: A code of conduct for doctors in Australia
     • Registration standards, and
     • other guidance as required.
5. Collaborations to foster a positive culture of medicine 
   • Promote a culture of medicine that is focused on patient safety.
   • Work in partnership with the profession to reshape the culture of medicine and build a culture of respect. This includes our work on the Medical Training Survey.
   • Encourage doctors to:
     • commit to reflective practice and lifelong learning
     • take care of their own health and wellbeing, and
     • support their colleagues.
   • Urge governments and other holders of large data to make it accessible to individual practitioners to support practice improvements.

The Board is committed to working with the medical profession and others in the health sector to implement the Professional Performance Framework. We are consulting widely as we develop each element and keeping our stakeholders informed as things change.

Each change is preceded by a transition period, so everyone has time to prepare.

Download a copy of the five pillars of the Professional Performance Framework

• Pillars of the Professional Performance Framework  (106 KB,PDF), Word version (87.3 KB,DOCX)

Download the Board’s Professional Performance Framework

• Building a professional performance framework (260 KB,PDF), Word version (140 KB,DOCX)

Contact the Board

Questions or comments about the Professional Performance Framework can be sent to: performanceframework@ahpra.gov.au.