Frequent Continuing Education Myths
While continuing education in the field is an ethical mandate, you do not have to present continuing education unless you have a license to renew. For example if you are not getting your APC and waiting to apply for full licensure, you will not be asked for your continuing education. Is it good practice to continue that education in the meantime? Of course, but if you want to save your money for expensive trainings that will count towards your license, wait until you have a license to renew. Often you can attend wonderful trainings for free or low cost because they don’t have the continuing education approval. I’ve also seen a trend where you can attend for free but pay for CEs. I hope to move to this model at some time in the future. If you know me you know I hate gatekeeping knowledge.
Continuing education doesn’t role over. Meaning you have a start date and an end to receive credit. The renewal cycle in Georgia is “The biennial licensure cycle is the two (2) year period beginning October 1st of each even numbered year, and ending on September 30th of every subsequent even numbered year.” https://rules.sos.ga.gov/gac/135-9 So plan accordingly. If you’re like me, you want to take all the classes right now, it’s so hard to wait but be strategic with your time and money.
Lastly, don’t freak out if you some of your hours get discredited (like they were from a disapproved organization) or were counted wrong (like you mistakenly took an asynchronous ethics course) This doesn’t mean you should worry at all, I’m just saying don’t go down the rabbit hole of “I’m gonna lose my license and never work again” freak out. They give you 6 months to make up the hours after the audit. Now if you don’t meet the deadline after that…it’s probably ok to freak out.
Continuing education can be overwhelming but it is important for us to stay up to date on things, I would add particularly multicultural, ethics, and telemental health (which I personally nerd out on). Check out this Georgia Continuing Education Tracker I developed for my premium members. If you join the premium membership, you can attend group coaching, coworking, and received additional products to help you tame the overwhelm and simplify your practice all for less than the cost of a Psychology Today subscription. The membership is month to month cancel and restart whenever.
Don’t want to join at this time, no worries, grab the tracker by itself or join the free membership which includes discounts and access to the library for resources.
