New Zealand OT CPD Requirements & Discounts!

If you obtained your occupational therapy license in Aotearoa New Zealand, you will need to complete continuing professional development at required intervals in order to maintain your certification to practice. To help, I’m going to walk you through the steps I take to maintain my own occupational therapy license (and easily find professional development education activities).

Note: New Zealand is commonly called by its Māori name, Aotearoa. For consistency and clarity, the name New Zealand is used throughout this post.

Click here to jump straight to the New Zealand OT CPD discounts!

Step 1: Look up your OT license.

To begin the process, I always double-check that my license is displaying correctly. You can check your registration with the Occupational Therapy Board of New Zealand here.

Step 2: Confirm the New Zealand OT continuing professional development requirements. 

It’s always good to double check for any updates to your 2025 renewal cycle. (One year, I completed ALL of my state of Nebraska requirements only to find out that they were waived due to COVID. 😭)

But, to get you going here is the information I found, with links to where I found it.

Here are the basic OT professional development requirements in New Zealand:

Occupational Therapists must be registered with the OT Board and hold an current practicing certificate to work in New Zealand.

Annual and short-term practicing certificates are valid until March 31 each year. All practicing certificates must be renewed at least annually.

An important part of maintaining your registration and certification is demonstrating continued professional development and competence across 5 broad areas:

1. Applying occupational therapy knowledge, skills and values
2. Practising appropriately for bicultural Aotearoa New Zealand
3. Building partnerships and collaborating
4. Practising in a safe, legal, ethical and culturally competent way
5. Engaging with and being responsible for your profession

How many hours are required? 

• Occupational therapists in New Zealand are not required to complete a specific number of professional development hours. Rather, ongoing professional development must be demonstrated across competency areas in an ePortfolio.

ePortfolio Requirements

All licensed occupational therapists in New Zealand are expected to:

• Maintain an ePortfolio of self assessments, learning goals, activities, and reflections across all 5 competency areas
  • See the OT Board of New Zealand ePortfolio User Guide
  • And access your ePortfolio here
• Nominate a third-party OT to review and attest to your portfolio prior to March 31. Your third-party must also be registered and certified to practice as an occupational therapist.

Verify here: The Occupational Therapy Board of New Zealand Guide to Renewing Your Practising Certificate

Here are the occupational therapy continuing professional development requirements in New Zealand:

These were copied from the New Zealand OT Competencies Handbook

The OT Board of New Zealand conducts regular audits of practitioners’ ePortfolio engagement and progress.

Step 3: Find Professional development activities that meet your learning goals (discounts below)!

Ok, now that you know your requirements, it is time to start identifying activities that meet your professional learning goals! There are of course a lot of options out there, but we hope you consider checking out the courses offered by OT Potential.

Do OT Potential courses count toward the continuing professional development required to renew my practice certificate?

Yes! OT Potential courses and resources can help you meet some of your required performance indicators, depending on your specific learning goals. Some specific performance indicators OT Potential might help you achieve include:

1.6 You select the appropriate assessments and evaluations when planning your practice.

• Occupational Therapy Assessment Guide
• Occupational Therapy Treatment Guides

1.7 You use current theory and evidence, as well as sound clinical reasoning, to help you make decisions and use the best processes in your practice.

• Evidence-Based Practice in OT Guide

1.15 You promote healthy practices, attitudes, and environments that contribute to occupational well-being

• OT and Habits course
• Lifestyle Medicine and OT course
• OT and Social Determinants of Health course

3.11 You look out for legitimate, evidence-based developments in the field of occupational therapy that could be applied to your practice.

• See the full list of OT Potential Courses, many of which fall under the category of ‘service delivery.’

5.2 You critically appraise and use professional literature to update your knowledge of current theories, techniques, technology, outcomes and practice. You use current developments in your practice

• 90 Most Influential OT Research Articles
• Helpful List of OT Journals
• See Journal Article Reviews in the OT Potential Club

Where can New Zealand OT professionals get the best deals on continuing education?

At OT Potential, our courses are all built around helping you get new evidence into practice.

But, what good is evidence-based practice, if you are not reimbursed appropriately for it? Our local associations do SUCH important advocacy work, when it comes to reimbursement and scope of practice. That’s why we’ve made it part of our mission to support these associations.

So, we have this win-win proposition for you. Join OT Potential using the promo code “New Zealand” to receive a 15% discount—and we’ll donate 15% of your order to OTNZ.

👍 Price of OT Potential with your New Zealand discount = $84.15 (Reg $99)
🎉 Donation amount to OTNZ = $12.62

And, the best part is if you decide to renew, it will be at your discounted price. AND, we’ll make another donation to OTNZ.

This is one of the cheapest ways to earn all of your required New Zealand OT CPDs, and you can feel good doing it because you are giving back to your national association ❤️.

Step 4: Renew your practice certificate. 🎉

Ok, now it’s time for the big moment.

You can renew your practice certificate online.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you found this post helpful!

As you can tell, I am a continuing education nerd 🤓, so if you have any other questions about continuing professional development and your New Zealand OT license renewal, just ask me the comments!