Often, yes, and the reason is simple: a webinar certificate documents attendance, while an assessed question set documents learning. Those are different claims, and appraisal is fundamentally interested in the second one. That is not an argument for abandoning webinars, which do real teaching work that questions cannot. It is an argument for understanding what each format proves, and for a combined workflow that takes the best of both.
Passive attendance versus active retrieval
The learning-science distinction underneath this comparison is two decades old and unusually robust: retrieval practice, being made to produce an answer, reliably beats passive exposure for retention. A webinar is exposure: valuable exposure, often expertly structured, but the evidence that any of it lodged is absent by design. You can attend an hour on heart failure while answering emails and collect the same certificate as the person who took notes. A question set inverts this: it cannot be completed passively, every item forces retrieval, and the output is a performance record rather than an attendance record.
For appraisal purposes this matters more than it first appears. The GMC's framework asks what you learned and what changed; an activity that measures both at source produces evidence aligned with the actual question.
What a certificate proves, and what it cannot
To be precise about it: a webinar or course certificate proves that a session took place, that its provider considered it educational, and that you were registered as present for a stated duration. Those are worth documenting. What the certificate cannot prove is engagement, comprehension, retention or impact, which is why appraisal guidance keeps asking doctors to attach reflection to certificates: the reflection is doing the evidential work the certificate cannot.
An assessed question record proves something closer to the target: on this date, across these topics, you answered these questions, scored this, got these specific items wrong, and, after correction, performed like this on re-test. Add a short reflection and the entry demonstrates identified gaps, corrected knowledge and considered impact in one artefact.
The underrated tool: baseline and reassessment
The strongest CPD evidence format available to an ordinary working doctor is also one of the least used: assess, learn, reassess. Run a question set on a topic before engaging with new teaching and you have a baseline; run a related set weeks later and you have documented change. This is the structure medical educators use to evaluate interventions, and nothing stops an individual doctor using it on themselves. It converts "I attended an update on diabetes" into "I scored 62 percent on diabetes management, attended the update, revised the gaps, and scored 88 percent a month later", which is the kind of entry appraisers remember.
Where webinars and courses genuinely win
Honesty requires the other column. Structured courses teach systematically in a way question banks do not: a well-built update course sequences a whole topic, explains the why behind guideline changes, and surfaces things you did not know you did not know, which questions can only sample. Live formats add discussion, cases argued in the room, and the prompt to actually set time aside. Some mandatory and skills-based learning, resuscitation, safeguarding, has no question-bank substitute at all. The claim is not that questions replace teaching; it is that questions are how you verify and evidence what the teaching left behind.
The combined workflow
The two formats compose naturally. Attend the webinar or work through the guideline update; then, within a week, run an assessed question set on the same territory and let the wrong answers tell you what actually stuck; remediate those specifically, with the Tutor interrogating the misconception; let spaced repetition return the topic over the following month; and file one CPD entry containing the certificate, the scores and a short reflection on the gap between what you heard and what you retained.
Concretely, by specialty. A GP finishes a menopause update, then runs a women's health question block: the update supplied the teaching, the questions reveal that HRT contraindications did not fully land, and the record shows the correction. An acute physician reads a new sepsis guideline, then sits a themed set: the score confirms alignment, and the entry documents verified currency rather than claimed reading. An emergency clinician attends a paediatric resuscitation course, then uses monthly short sets to evidence that the knowledge component is being maintained between annual courses.
Frequently asked questions
Will appraisers actually accept question-bank evidence?
Appraisal frameworks ask for relevant learning with reflection, and a performance record plus reflection meets that on its face; most appraisers respond well to evidence of assessed learning precisely because it is rarer than certificates. If in doubt, discuss it at appraisal, where a good entry of this kind tends to generate the best conversations.
Is a score of 60 percent embarrassing to file?
The opposite: identified gaps with documented correction is the strongest narrative appraisal evidence can have. An entry that says "found weaknesses, fixed them, verified the fix" beats a row of 100 percents that suggest you tested only what you already knew.
How long should the reflective note be?
A few sentences. Current guidance across the system explicitly favours concise, meaningful reflection over volume; say what you got wrong, what the guidance says, and what changes.