CAPE domains

You must address each of the following areas as part of your CPD activities:

• Culturally safe practice
• Addressing health inequities
• Professionalism
• Ethics. 

Together this list of requirements is called the 'CAPE' domains. You are required to complete at least one activity for each of the four domains, and record this as part of your CPD.

The CAPE domains are embedded throughout activities offered by the RANZCP. 

C – Culturally safe practice 

Practising in a culturally safe way involves acknowledging the inherent power imbalance in the relationship between a psychiatrist and a consumer in your care. This is particularly important with Māori and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to address the inequities arising from colonisation. Learning will acknowledge the cultural diversity of the patient population and the need for doctors to conduct ongoing critical reflection and self-awareness of their knowledge, skills, attitudes, assumptions, and behaviours to provide accessible, safe, and responsive care. 

Examples: 

• Reflective practice – understanding how personal values, beliefs, and biases shape a health professional’s attitudes, behaviours, overall practice. 
• Minimising power imbalance – reflecting on how health professionals’ societal and organisational positions of power and privilege affect their unconscious assumptions and comparisons about people from different backgrounds. 
• Engagement and Discourse – creating a mutual understanding of treatment approaches while honouring and incorporating various cultural beliefs. 
• Decolonisation – recognising and addressing the impact of intergenerational trauma within healthcare settings. 

Browse content related to culturally safe practice:

Clinical guidelines, position statements and reports
Events
Webinars

A – Addressing health inequities

Learning that acknowledges the differing distribution of resources and opportunities within society and discusses how doctors can address this inequity.  

Examples: 

• Equitable Access to Care – ensuring healthcare services are of high-quality, readily available, and culturally acceptable to all individuals, regardless of their background to promote fair and effective care for everyone. 
• Addressing Structural Determinants of Health – confronting and dismantling systemic issues such as sexism, racism, ageism, classism and ablism. 
• Building Community Partnerships – engaging with local organisations and community leaders to identify and address the unique health needs and barriers experienced by marginalised groups. 
• Access to resources – ensuring that support services such as childcare, housing assistance and financial aid are available and accessible to low-income or marginalised communities. 

Browse related content for addressing health inequities:

Clinical guidelines, position statements and reports
Events
Webinars

P – Professionalism

Learning that contributes to high-quality care and involves undertaking exercises and activities that enhance the entire practice, aiding self-reflection, and self-awareness. Participating in CPD is an activity that supports professionalism. 

Examples: 

• Adhering to ethical principles – healthcare professionals must uphold the highest ethical standards and act with integrity, honesty, and transparency to maintain the trust of their patience and their families. 
• Effective communication – fostering strong relationships with patients and their families through clear, respectful, and open communication. 
• Empathy and compassion – providing care with empathy and compassion towards patients and their families during difficult times. 

Browse related content for professionalism:

Clinical guidelines, position statements and reports
Events
Webinars

E – Ethics

Learning that cultivates and maintains high principles and standards of practice and ethics in respect of psychiatry; to promote fair, honourable and proper practice. This may consider how to discourage and suppress malpractice or misconduct, and discussion to settle doubtful points of practice and questions of professional usage. 

Examples:  

• Beneficence – the healthcare provider must commit to recommending all possible treatment options to patients while carefully considering their concerns and their wishes. 
• Nonmaleficence – ensuring that actions taken in patient care are justifiable by the expected patient benefits outweighing the pain or discomfort they may experience. 
• Autonomy – acknowledges the right of patients to informed consent leading to an agreement authorisation for care, treatment, or services. 
• Justice – patients have the right to equitable care which means patients should not be denied care for a relatively minor injury and arrived before another patient who needed intensive care. 

Browse related content for ethics:

RANZCP Code of Ethics
Codes of conduct and ethics
Clinical guidelines, position statements and reports
Events 
Webinars

Record CAPE activities in MyCPD

Each activity added to MyCPD has checkboxes for the CAPE domains, allowing you to identify and record your actions against each area.

Where an activity has been generated by RANZCP,  (for example completed Learnit modules) the CAPE domains are selected automatically.