CPD College Alignment
Everything you need to log the hours, get it approved, and know what you're signing up for.
If you need something specific for your college or board and it isn't here, ask us and we'll chase it.
Every Educational Escape is a residential CPD retreat that combines formal workshop teaching with structured reflective practice and peer consultation. You'll receive documentation of hours and activity types after the Escape, formatted for CPD logging.
March 2027 Escape: 20 hours Four days of formal workshop training and facilitated reflective practice.
For FAQs - click HERE
Doctors/Consultants
Our Educational Escapes are structured to align with the Medical Board's CPD Standards.
All Educational Escapes have been certified by:
- RACP (Approved training)
- MyCPD Home (Certified Learning Provider).
Resilience in Practice Escape
Learning Domains:
Self-care is now a professional requirement under the Medical Board of Australia's Good Medical Practice code (Section 11.2). This retreat directly addresses this.
Domain 1: Educational Activities - 20 hours of evidence-based teaching on the neurobiology of burnout, vicarious trauma and moral injury, and psychological flexibility under sustained occupational stress.
Domain 2: Reviewing Performance and Measuring Outcomes are met through validated pre- and post-program measures, including the ProQOL-5 and a burnout inventory, and structured peer skill-practice with facilitator feedback against defined readiness criteria.
CAPE Aspects: Professionalism - fitness to practise, signs of burnout, and sound clinical judgement under system pressure.
Ethical Practice - professional boundaries, self-disclosure, and ethical decision-making in high-demand clinical environments.
Trauma Essentials (Level 1)
Learning Domains:
Domain 1: Educational Activities - 20 hours of evidence-based teaching covering trauma neurobiology, leading models of trauma assessment and intervention.
Domain 2: Reviewing Performance and Measuring Outcomes - validated pre- and post-program knowledge assessment, a Quality Improvement Plan for services, and structured evaluation including a three-month follow-up survey on practice change.
CAPE Aspects
Trauma Essentials addresses all four of the Medical Board's CAPE aspects:
Professionalism: content on vicarious trauma and burnout, building a self-care plan.
Ethical Practice,: Power Threat Meaning Framework as an alternative to pathologising labels; explicit teaching on boundaries and scope of practice.
Culturally Safe Practice: the SEWB framework, culturally validated screening tools.
Addressing Health Inequities: focus on disproportionate trauma burden carried by First Nations, refugee and migrant patients; trauma-informed practice; how to address.
Self-care: stress, burnout, anxiety or depression; a personal self-care plan, built specifically around the vicarious trauma risk of trauma-exposed clinical work.
Psychologists
Our Educational Escapes are structured to meet the professional learning needs of psychologists and align with the Psychology Board of Australia's (PsyBA) current evidence-based CPD standards and Professional Standards to ensure that you meet your registration requirements.
All Educational Escapes are APS-aligned. (Note: The APS has no regulatory functions over Psychologist's ability to claim CPD hours towards the Psychology Board of Australia's (PBA) registration requirements). All Educational Escapes meet the following Professional Competency Domains set by the PsyBA:
Resilience in Practice Escape
Resilience in Practice satisfies the following core competencies under the Psychology Board of Australia's Professional Competencies for Psychologists:
Competency 1: Applies and builds scientific knowledge: Evidence-based teaching on the neurobiology of burnout, vicarious trauma and moral injury, drawing on current models in assessment and intervention; use of ACT, CFT and EMDR techniques to build a repertoire of evidence-based tools.
Competency 2: Practises ethically and professionally: Professional boundaries and identity under system pressure; self-disclosure discussion; ethical decision-making around own needs in practice.
Competency 3: Professional reflexivity, deliberate practice and self-care: Structured reflection on how your culture, values and biases influence practice (Social GRACES model); critically examine own professional functioning; complete a personal self-care plan; directly "monitoring and managing self-care to sustain professional functioning and wellbeing." Learn to apply psychological models to own self-care.
Trauma Essentials - Level 1
Competency 1: Applies and builds scientific knowledge: Evidence review of trauma neurobiology and treatment guidelines; the Power Threat Meaning Framework as an alternative to pathologising diagnostic labels; ACT, CFT and EMDR techniques to assess, diagnose and support interventions.
Competency 3: Professional reflexivity, deliberate practice and self-care: Structured reflection on how participants have previously labelled and misread traumatised patients; education on vicarious trauma, burnout and moral injury as a sequlae of trauma-informed care; personal self-care plan addressing vicarious trauma risk.
Competency 4: Conducts psychological assessments - Direct training in validated trauma screening tools, including the PC-PTSD-5, PCL-5, ACE and K10; awareness of culturally validated alternatives for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients; self-assessment of vicarious trauma risk;
Competency 6: Communicates and relates to others effectively - Trauma-informed language education, referral letter writing for effective handover, and communicating with patients and receiving clinicians.
Competency 7 and 8: Health equity and human rights, diverse groups/Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Peoples - Content focused on systemic and racial trauma (including Aboriginal intergenerational trauma); refugee and migrant trauma presentations; prevalence and access barriers for minority groups; Social and Emotional Wellbeing framework; create a culturally safe clinical environment.
Nursing and Allied Health
All Educational Escapes are designed to meet the needs of Allied Health and Nursing professionals.
Each Educational Escape provides all 20 hours of CPD.
Nurses and midwives (NMBA):
20 hours of CPD per registration year, relevant to your context of practice. Trauma Essentials and Resilience in Practice have clinical content on trauma recognition, burnout and vicarious trauma - relevant to all nurses.
Nurses will particularly benefit from learning to improve self-care skills and prevent burnout as part of busy roles. Given they regularly support patients through traumatic procedures and their aftermath, nurses will particularly benefit from the Trauma Essentials Escape to improve professional practice.
Please see Learning Objectives on the CPE page for more information.
Social workers: (AASW accreditation)
Resilience in Practice Escape
Skills and Knowledge Domain: 20 hours of evidence-based training in the neurobiology of stress and burnout; ACT, CFT and EMDR skills in the management of our own care and resilience inside strained system; attachment theory and polyvagal theory as applied to resilience, psychological flexibility and self-care.
Focussed Psychological Strategies: Learn skills from modalities including ACT, CFT, CBT and EMDR to apply to self and others.
Trauma Essentials (Level 1)
Skills and Knowledge Domain: 20 hours of evidence-based training in the neurobiology of trauma and the impact of trauma on client's lives; Assessment and intervention skills for the recognition and support of clients who have experienced trauma. Examine the effect of systemic, racial and intergenerational trauma on minority groups including Aborginal and Torres Islanders and LGBTQI+
Focused Psychological Strategies: Learn ACT, CBT and EMDR techniques to support the care of people with trauma backgrounds.
If you don't hold AASW accreditation, there is no regulatory CPD requirement to meet, only your own professional judgement about what's useful.
Speech pathologists (SPA Certified Practising status):
20 hours of CPD per membership year, including a minimum 2 hours of cultural learning specific to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural safety, and 2 hours of professional support. Trauma Essentials' Social and Emotional Wellbeing content meets the cultural learning category directly; the peer consultation structure in both Escapes meets professional support.
Occupational therapists (OT Board):
20 hours of CPD per registration year, including a minimum 5 hours of interactive learning. Both Escapes are delivered as small-group, experiential training rather than passive lecture content, which satisfies the interactive-learning requirement directly, whilst also meeting your 20 hours of CPD requirements.
FAQs
Got a burning question about our Educational Escapes? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions section below.
APS Approval
Is Starling HC "APS Approved?"
The Australian Psychological Society (APS) is a membership body - NOT a regulator. It doesn't approve, accredit or license training providers.
The actual regulator is the Psychology Board of Australia (PsyBA), which sits under AHPRA, and has issued its own regulatory Code of Conduct. What this means practically: Psychologists don't need our training pre-approved by anyone. CPD is self-directed. Each psychologist logs their own 30 hours a year (at least 10 of them peer consultation) against their own learning plan and decides for themselves whether an activity is relevant to their practice. Attending Resilience in Practice or Trauma Essentials counts as CPD because the psychologist attending it says so, backed by our documentation of hours and content, not because Starling HC or the APS has stamped it. So why aren't we "APS accredited?" Because nobody accredits individual CPD activities for psychologists - not even the APS.
Wellness?
Is this a wellness retreat?
No. Educational Escapes are structured, evidence-based clinical training programs for health professionals.
Each includes formal teaching sessions aligned to CPD requirements, followed by curated cultural and restorative experiences. There's yoga, walks in the bush, and time to think. There's also 20-30 hours of workshop content and a knowledge assessment.
CPD aligned
Do the escapes count as CPD?
Yes. Both Escapes are built around structured learning outcomes and documented hours, and are approved or aligned across multiple accrediting bodies for doctors, psychologists, nurses, occupational therapists, speech pathologists and social workers.
Trauma therapy
Is Trauma Essentials the same as trauma therapy training?
No. Trauma Essentials is Level 1 of a three-level series and teaches recognition, referral and safe response, not treatment. It's designed for any health professional who meets trauma in their work, not only mental health clinicians. Treatment-level training sits at Levels 2 and 3.
Prior Training
Do I need prior trauma training for Trauma Essentials?
No. Trauma Essentials assumes no formal trauma training. We do expect that experienced clinicians will already have a working sense of how trauma turns up in their practice, because you can't work in health without meeting it.
Is it For me?
Choices
What's the difference between Resilience in Practice and Trauma Essentials?
Resilience in Practice focuses on clinician wellbeing, burnout and sustainable practice, built from ACT and Compassion-Focused Therapy frameworks. Trauma Essentials focuses on recognising and responding to trauma in patients, built from current trauma neurobiology and the Power Threat Meaning Framework. They can be attended in either order and aren't sequential levels of the same program.
Which one?
Do I need to choose between the November and March dates, or can I do both?
Each Escape runs independently, so you can attend Resilience in Practice, Trauma Essentials, or both, in either November or March.
Funding
My employer will fund this. What do I give them to help them decide this is worthwhile training?
There's an employer brochure for each Escape with learning outcomes, dates, hours and facilitator qualifications, written for someone approving a budget rather than someone attending. Download it from the relevant Escape page, or ask and we'll email it.
Who is each escape for?
Sober?
Both are designed for doctors, psychologists, nurses, dentists, social workers, occupational therapists, speech pathologists and allied health clinicians working in high-demand roles. The cohort is deliberately mixed, because most of the useful conversations happen across professions rather than within them.
I don't drink - will half the program be wasted on me?
No. The food and the settings carry it; the wine is optional and always has been. Tell us when you book and every venue and tasting will have something for you that isn't an afterthought.
Cancellations
What's the Cancellation policy?
Full terms are on our Terms and Conditions page. In short: your deposit secures your place and isn't refundable, and accommodation and balance payments follow a sliding refund scale the closer you get to your Escape.
Group size
How big is the group?
No more than 10 participants - kept small on purpose. Within that group, you'll move through small breakout groups and pairs across the program, so the group never feels large even at capacity.
Accessibility
What about dietaries or accessibility?
Dietary requirements are accommodated as standard. Our hospitality host is chef-trained and works directly with venues to make sure this isn't an afterthought.
Accessibility needs, including mobility considerations can be accommodated. As can neurodivergent learning styles: the program's structure, small groups, movement etc. already suits a range of learning needs rather than requiring separate adaptation. Tell us about any dietary, accessibility or learning needs when you book, and we'll work it through with you in advance.