CPD Bee User Guide

CPD Bee adapts to your profession. When you join, you choose one of three pathways — and from then on CPD Bee tracks the right compliance framework for you. Use the cards below to find your route through this guide.

Welcome to CPD Bee. This guide walks you through every feature — from your first recording to exporting an appraisal-ready portfolio. CPD Bee runs entirely in your web browser: nothing to install, no plugins.

Create your account

Visit cpdbee.co.uk and start your 28-day free trial. You will enter an email address and password, agree to the privacy terms, and confirm your email. You then complete a short onboarding — your name, your professional pathway (see section 3), and your learning preferences. The whole process takes only a few minutes. Section 2 explains exactly how the free trial and subscription work.

Supported devices

CPD Bee works on iPhone, Android, tablet, and desktop computers. Voice recording uses your browser's speech engine: on iPhone this requires Safari; on Android it requires Chrome. Every other feature works on Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Edge across all devices.

What CPD Bee does for you

• Records CPD three ways — speak it, photograph a certificate, or import a document. AI turns each into a structured record.
• Understands your specialty — over 4,000 phonetic corrections across 59 professions, so medical and clinical terminology is transcribed accurately.
• Tracks your compliance — GMC revalidation, NMC revalidation, or HCPC/AHCS audit readiness, automatically matched to your pathway.
• Exports audit-ready portfolios — PDF, Word, Excel, and regulator-specific appraisal and revalidation reports.
• Tracks mandatory training — a separate record of your NHS statutory and mandatory training, with renewal dates.

CPD Bee Professional begins with a 28-day free trial that gives you full access to every feature. Here is exactly how the trial and billing work.

How the free trial works

• 28 days, full access. You can use every feature throughout the trial — voice recording, document import, course discovery, exports, and your compliance dashboard.
• A payment method is required to start. When you begin your trial you will enter card details on a secure Stripe payment page. This confirms your subscription so your access continues without interruption when the trial ends.
• No charge during the trial. Nothing is taken from your card while the trial is running.
• A reminder before it ends. CPD Bee emails you a reminder a few days before your trial ends, so you have time to decide.
• Billing begins on day 29. When the trial ends, your subscription starts automatically at £4.99 per month unless you have cancelled.

The plans

During onboarding you select your pathway. This determines which profession list you see and which compliance framework CPD Bee tracks for you.

Medical Doctor (GMC)

Choose this if you are a GMC-registered doctor. You then pick from 35 specialties grouped by Royal College pathway: Primary Care (General Practitioner); Medical Specialties (RCP pathway — cardiology, respiratory, gastroenterology, neurology, endocrinology and more); Surgical Specialties (RCS pathway — general surgery, orthopaedics, ENT, urology, neurosurgery and more); and Other Specialties (anaesthetics, emergency medicine, psychiatry, paediatrics, obstetrics & gynaecology, radiology, oncology, ophthalmology, pathology, public health, occupational medicine).

You then enter your GMC number, grade (FY1 through to Consultant or GP roles), Royal College membership(s), and professional associations (BMA, BCS, BSG, BOA and others).

Allied Health Professional (HCPC / AHCS)

Choose this if you are registered with the HCPC or AHCS. You select from professions including audiologists, biomedical scientists, clinical scientists, cardiac / respiratory / neuro / sleep / vascular physiologists, dietitians, hearing aid dispensers, occupational therapists, operating department practitioners, paramedics, physiotherapists, podiatrists, radiographers, and speech & language therapists.

Nurse or Midwife (NMC)

Choose this if you are registered with the NMC. Six profession types are available: Nurse (Adult), Nurse (Children), Nurse (Mental Health), Nurse (Learning Disability), Midwife, and Nursing Associate.

The dashboard is your home base — you will see it every time you log in.

Sidebar navigation

• Overview — your readiness score, activity mix, and recent records.
• Records — all your CPD entries, with filters, plus the Course Finder.
• Profile — your professional details and preferences.
• Revalidation / Audit Prep — your compliance tracking. The label changes to match your pathway (see below).
• Team — for Enterprise plans only.
• Account — billing, security, and account settings.

Your compliance tab adapts to you

The sidebar automatically shows the right compliance tab for your pathway:

• Doctors see GMC Revalidation (section 13).
• Nurses and midwives see NMC Revalidation (section 14).
• Allied health professionals see Audit Preparation (section 15).

Your readiness score

Doctors see a Revalidation score built from six criteria: CPD volume, a revalidation date being set, completed records, substantive reflections, a diverse mix of activity types, and current annual declarations. Allied health and nursing users see an Audit Readiness score based on their regulator's standards.

Quick actions in the header

The top bar carries large buttons for the things you do most often: + Add (a manual record), Voice (open the recording panel), Export (generate a PDF, Word, Excel, or appraisal report), and Guide (this document).

Speaking is the fastest way to capture CPD. Click the Voice button in the header, press the microphone, and talk naturally about your activity. When you are done, click Analyze with AI — CPD Bee turns your spoken account into a structured record you can review before saving.

What to mention as you speak

• The activity name or title, and who provided or organised it
• How long it lasted (hours or minutes)
• What it covered
• What you learned
• How it will benefit your patients or your practice

Built to understand clinical language

Web speech recognition often mis-hears medical terminology. CPD Bee applies a layered correction system behind the scenes — over 4,000 phonetic corrections across 59 professions. For doctors this covers a base medical vocabulary, drug names, specialty-specific terminology, and appraisal and governance language. Allied health and nursing professionals get a profession-enhanced vocabulary plus a dedicated clinical physiology pack.

Tips for accurate transcription

• Speak clearly and pause between sentences.
• Quieter environments give better results.
• If a long recording is interrupted, CPD Bee silently recovers and continues.
• If recognition keeps struggling, simply type a few sentences into the transcript box instead — the AI works equally well from typed text.

Photograph a paper certificate with your phone and CPD Bee turns it into a complete CPD record — with the certificate image stored as evidence. This replaces typing a certificate in by hand.

How it works

What you can scan

The scanner works with training certificates, course completion documents, conference programmes, clinical guidelines, leaflets, and articles. Records created from a scan show a Scanned badge in your records list, and the original image can be downloaded later for your appraiser or auditor.

Document import is a primary way to record CPD — not just a way to migrate old records. Drag and drop a certificate, conference programme, course summary, reflective account, or appraisal note into CPD Bee, and the AI reads it and generates a complete record.

Supported formats

• PDF — certificates, course brochures, reflective accounts
• Word (.docx, .doc) — meeting notes, course summaries
• Excel (.xlsx) — bulk import of several activities at once
• PowerPoint (.pptx) — conference and teaching decks
• Plain text (.txt) and images (.jpg, .png) of certificates

What the AI extracts

From your document, the AI identifies the activity type, date, duration, and provider, and drafts a detailed description, a reflection, and the impact on practice. For doctors, it also suggests the credit category, whether the activity was clinical or non-clinical, the relevant GMP domains, and the supporting information type (see section 9).

Smart duplicate detection & certificate validation

If you import a document that matches an activity already in your portfolio, CPD Bee flags it so you do not create a duplicate. Genuine certificates are marked with a green validation badge, and the source document is attached to the record so it can be downloaded later for your appraiser.

Sometimes you want to type a record directly. Click + Add in the header to open the manual record form.

Core fields (every record)

• Title — required; keep it specific and searchable.
• Date — defaults to today.
• Duration — in hours; decimals are allowed (for example 1.5).
• Type — Formal (courses, conferences), Work-Based (on-the-job learning), Self-Directed (reading, videos), or Professional (committee work, teaching).
• Provider — the organisation or person who ran the activity.
• Description — what happened.
• Reflection — what you learned and how your thinking changed.
• Patient / Service User Benefit — how this improves care or service delivery.

Draft or Complete

New records start as Draft. Mark a record Complete when you are happy with it. Complete records contribute to your readiness score; drafts do not. This lets you capture something quickly and finish it later.

Attaching a document

You can attach a supporting document — a certificate, a handout — to any record. CPD Bee stores it securely in cloud storage and includes it when you export that record.

If you are a GMC-registered doctor, every record carries an additional GMC appraisal details section. These fields populate your GMC Revalidation dashboard and your Annual Appraisal Report. The section is expanded on your first visit and remembers your preference afterwards.

CPD Credit Category

• External (Category 1) — a conference, course, or study day outside your Trust.
• Internal (Category 2) — a grand round, journal club, M&M meeting, or local teaching.
• Personal (Category 3) — reading, online learning, preparation, or teaching others.

Clinical / Non-clinical

Distinguishes patient-facing clinical learning from non-clinical activities such as management, leadership, ethics, or appraisal skills.

GMP 2024 Domain(s)

Multi-select tags for the four Good Medical Practice domains:

• Domain 1 — Knowledge, skills & development
• Domain 2 — Patients, partnership & communication
• Domain 3 — Colleagues, culture & safety
• Domain 4 — Trust & professionalism

The AI suggests domains based on the record content; you can adjust them before saving.

Supporting Information Type

The GMC recognises six types of supporting information: CPD activity (the default), Quality Improvement, Significant Event, Colleague Feedback, Patient Feedback, and Complaints / Compliments. Tagging records across these six types ensures your portfolio covers the full breadth your appraiser expects.

Activity Code & Credits Override

If a CPD activity has an approval code (for example RCP123456), record it in the Activity Code field. If the credit value differs from the duration — many accredited events assign specific credits that do not equal hours — enter the correct figure in Credits Override; otherwise CPD Bee uses the duration.

Learning Notes are a quick-capture scratchpad for ideas you want to explore later — a thought after a ward round, a topic a colleague mentioned, a gap you noticed in your own knowledge. They are deliberately not CPD records.

Capturing a note

You can add a Learning Note from the Overview screen or from the Profile tab. Type it, or use the voice button to speak it — the same clinical-vocabulary corrections apply. Notes are short by design; you can keep up to 20 active at a time.

Turning a note into action

Each note carries simple actions:

• Find courses — searches the Course Finder for CPD on that topic.
• Start CPD record — opens the voice recorder pre-loaded with your note, ready to build into a full record.
• Mark explored — flags a note you have looked into but not yet acted on.

The AI Course Finder helps you discover relevant CPD. Go to Records → Courses. Tell CPD Bee what you want to learn and it searches 80+ professional body and education provider websites in real time.

How it works

CPD Bee fetches live content from verified sources including UK Royal Colleges (RCP, RCS, RCGP, RCoA, RCEM, RCPsych and others), professional bodies (CSP, RCOT, RCSLT, BDA, RCN, BCS, IBMS, SoR and more), online providers (BMJ Learning, FutureLearn, e-LfH, OpenLearn, Coursera, edX), and international societies. The AI extracts real courses from the actual pages — no invented results.

Four tabs

• AI Discovered — fresh search results; Keep or Dismiss each one.
• Online, UK Based, International — the courses you have kept, sorted by where they take place.

Courses you Keep build a private library of trusted providers, and CPD Bee prioritises similar sources in future searches. The Fill My Gaps button analyses your existing portfolio and suggests courses for areas you have not covered.

Marking a course complete

When you have finished a saved course, click Mark Done. You can either record it as a full CPD record straight away — CPD Bee pre-fills the Add Record form for you — or simply mark it complete. Each course tab shows a running summary, for example “3 saved, 2 completed”.

Click Profile in the sidebar to see your professional details, learning goals, preferred learning styles, and clinical interests. Click Edit Profile to update anything.

Five AI writing styles

Set your default writing style once, and every AI-generated record matches your tone:

• Standard — balanced professional language (the default).
• Formal — third person, academic tone for portfolios.
• Informal — conversational, natural and approachable.
• Scientific — evidence-based and methodological.
• Brevity — concise, short sentences, around half the word count.

Doctor-specific profile fields

Doctors have additional profile fields that feed the Revalidation tab and appraisal exports:

• Revalidation Date — your next GMC revalidation deadline.
• Designated Body — usually your NHS Trust or Health Board.
• Responsible Officer — the clinician who makes your revalidation recommendation.
• Annual Appraisal Month — when your appraisal typically takes place.
• CPD Year Start — April for RCP / physician pathways; fully configurable.

If you are GMC-registered, your sidebar shows a Revalidation tab. This dashboard tracks everything your appraiser will want to see across your 5-year cycle, and includes your Personal Development Plan and your Annual Appraisal Report.

Cycle overview

The top of the tab shows your countdown to revalidation, a progress bar through the 5-year cycle, and your appraisal count (for example “3 of 5 complete”). If you have not set a revalidation date, CPD Bee shows a warning with a link to your profile.

Six types of supporting information

A grid of six tiles tracks your progress against each GMC supporting information type: CPD Activities, Quality Improvement, Significant Events, Colleague Feedback, Patient Feedback, and Complaints / Compliments. Each tile shows a green tick once you have met the expected frequency, or an amber marker when it is still due.

CPD credits

For RCP, RCS, RCoA, RCEM, and other credit-using specialties, CPD Bee tracks your total against the 50 credits per year target, broken down by category: External (target 25), Internal, and Personal (maximum 20). A separate line shows your clinical versus non-clinical split.

GMP 2024 domain coverage

Four bars show how many records in the current CPD year map to each Good Medical Practice domain (Knowledge, Patients, Colleagues, Trust). A spread of records across all four domains is usually a positive signal at appraisal.

Appraisal history

A 5-year timeline lists each annual appraisal. You can mark an appraisal complete directly from the timeline — CPD Bee records the date and updates your portfolio summary.

Annual declarations

Two checkboxes — a Health declaration and a Probity declaration — carry the GMC standard wording. Ticking one records today’s date. Declarations expire automatically after 365 days, prompting you to re-confirm each appraisal year.

Personal Development Plan (PDP)

The PDP records the learning objectives you have agreed with your appraiser. Click + Add Objective and enter your learning objective, how you will achieve it, a target date, and the GMP domain it maps to. Every objective moves through three states — Not Started, In Progress, Completed — and completed objectives record their completion date. Your PDP appears in the Annual Appraisal Report so your appraiser can see progress at a glance.

AI appraisal summary

Click Generate Summary and CPD Bee produces a 250–350 word professional summary of your CPD year — themes, changes to practice, and how your activities map to the GMP domains. It is a starting point: review and personalise it before your appraisal meeting. You can regenerate it as often as you like (it needs at least three CPD records in the year).

GMC Annual Appraisal Report PDF

At the bottom of the Revalidation tab, click Generate Annual Appraisal Report PDF for a branded portfolio document covering your details, CPD credit summary, supporting information summary, GMP domain coverage, annual declarations, PDP progress, planned learning delivered, appraisal history, and a full activity log with reflections.

If you are NMC-registered, your sidebar shows an NMC Reval tab. CPD Bee tracks the NMC revalidation framework — renewed every three years — from end to end.

What CPD Bee tracks

• 35 CPD hours, with a minimum of 20 participatory (group-based) hours.
• Five reflective accounts linked to the NMC Code.
• Practice hours — 450 over the three years.
• Professional indemnity — confirmed in your profile.
• Health and character — a self-declaration.
• Third-party confirmation — record your confirmer and the date.
• NMC Code coverage — each record can reference specific Code paragraphs (Prioritise, Practise, Preserve, Promote).

Exporting your NMC portfolio

The Export button generates an NMC Revalidation Portfolio PDF, formatted to match NMC expectations and ready for your confirmer meeting.

HCPC and AHCS registrants see an Audit Prep tab in the sidebar. CPD Bee scores your portfolio against the four HCPC audit standards and shows you exactly where any gaps are.

The four standards

• Maintaining accurate records of your CPD.
• Mixing activity types — formal, work-based, self-directed, and professional.
• Evidencing impact on practice.
• Demonstrating benefit to service users.

Your readiness score

The dashboard shows your audit readiness as a percentage, with clear guidance on anything still missing. Target hours default to 35 hours over 2 years but are adjustable to match your circumstances. When your audit notice arrives, you can export your full portfolio in one click (see section 17).

Alongside your CPD portfolio, CPD Bee tracks your NHS statutory and mandatory training — fire safety, safeguarding, infection prevention, resuscitation, the Oliver McGowan training and more — kept entirely separate from your CPD records. You choose which training applies to your role, log each one as you complete it, and CPD Bee tracks when it falls due for renewal.

Choosing what applies to you

The NHS mandatory training list is broad, and not every subject — or every level — applies to every role. So you select which trainings are required for you. Only the items you select are tracked: anything you have not selected never shows as an outstanding gap. The universal all-staff subjects, such as Fire Safety and Data Security Awareness, are selected for you to begin with; you add the rest to match your role.

Each level is tracked separately

Many subjects have several levels — Safeguarding runs from Level 1 to Level 3, Resuscitation has several, and so on. CPD Bee treats every level as its own entry. You select and log each level you need, and completing a higher level never overwrites a lower one: each level keeps its own completion date, its own certificate and its own renewal date, so your full training history stays intact.

Logging your training

For each required item, record the completion date and, if you have one, upload the certificate. CPD Bee calculates the renewal date from the subject’s renewal period and shows each item’s status at a glance:

For Enterprise teams

On an Enterprise plan, owners and admins get a team view. The manager sets the team’s default required training, giving every member a starting list to refine for their own role. A colour-coded compliance grid gives an at-a-glance overview of each member against every subject; expand any member to see their full per-level detail — each training and level with its status, completion date and renewal date. A sortable, filterable Team Training Detail table lists every individual training record across the team. The view is read-only — members log their own training — and owners can also tailor the training list and renewal periods for the organisation.

Click the Export button in the dashboard header. The export options shown are matched to your pathway.

For doctors (GMC)

• GMC Appraisal Report (PDF) — the comprehensive annual portfolio described in section 13.
• Standard PDF — a clean activity log.
• Excel — a spreadsheet of all fields for analysis.
• Word — a document format for sharing.

For nurses and midwives (NMC)

• NMC Revalidation Portfolio (PDF) — structured to match the NMC framework.
• Standard PDF, Excel, and Word.

For allied health (HCPC / AHCS)

• Standard PDF — an audit-ready portfolio.
• Excel and Word.

What every export contains

Exports include each record’s title, date, duration, type, provider, description, reflection, and patient or service-user benefit. Document attachments are referenced with their source filenames. For doctors, GMP domains and credit categories appear in the appraisal report.

The Account tab is where you manage your subscription, security, and data. Healthcare data is personal — CPD Bee treats it that way.

Your subscription

The Account tab shows your current plan and, during a trial, how long is left. Select Manage Subscription to open the secure billing portal, where you can update your payment method, view invoices, or cancel. As described in section 2, cancelling before your trial ends means no charge is taken.

AES-256-GCM encryption at rest

The sensitive narrative fields of your records — description, reflection, and patient benefit — are encrypted with AES-256-GCM in your browser, before the data ever reaches the database. Each user has a unique encryption key derived from their account. Even the developer cannot read your clinical reflections by looking at the database directly.

If you joined CPD Bee before encryption was introduced, use the Encrypt my existing records button in the Account tab to re-save your back catalogue with encrypted narrative fields.

Further security measures

• Two-factor authentication — optional TOTP, working with Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, or Authy.
• Leaked password protection — every password is checked against the HaveIBeenPwned database of known breaches.
• Row-level security — each user’s data is isolated at the database level.
• Secure AI processing — AI requests go through an authenticated server, never directly from your browser to third-party services.

GDPR Article 17 — Right to Erasure

The Delete My Account button permanently removes your profile, records, and uploaded documents, and cancels any active subscription. This action is irreversible — export your records first if you want to keep a copy.

The Enterprise plan adds team management for organisations of up to 8 members. A Team tab appears in the sidebar for owners and admins.

Managing your team

• Members — see every team member with their CPD progress, plus the mandatory training compliance grid (section 16).
• Invites — send email invitations to new members; invitations expire after 7 days.
• Settings — organisation branding and shared audit settings.

Members can hold one of three roles: Owner, Admin, or Member.

Organisation branding

Enterprise owners can apply their organisation’s branding, so the workspace and exports feel like part of your own organisation.

—  CPD Bee  ·  cpdbee.co.uk  —