CRPO Exam Lab
CRPO's practice standards, Code of Ethics, competency profile and the Ontario law the exam draws on, as modules to read. Many also have a lesson, which teaches the same module through short questions. Pick a module below, or let Today's session choose one from your study plan.
18 modules · 80k words · about 12 hours of reading
Free to read: every module, study sheet and decision diagram. The lessons and learning cards come with a subscription.
What this covers maps every standard, principle, competency and law to the lesson that teaches it, with how many cards and cases test it.
Guides give short, sourced answers to what candidates ask most: the format, scoring, practice questions, tips, what to study, exam day, the exam in French, becoming an RP, and the law.
The blueprint and the scoring scale, from CRPO's resource manual
Every exam form draws its simulations from seven areas, in these shares.
The percentages are the minimum standards for every version of the exam. Area 3, the therapeutic relationship, is the largest part.
Area 6 draws on many competencies, but the manual notes that several are best assessed in practice, by direct observation and clinical supervision, so the simulations do not test them in depth.
Source: CRPO/COMPASS Registration Examination resource manual, Diagram 2.
Every option carries a weight from +3 to -3 for how much it helps or harms the client. Choosing harmful options costs points, so selecting everything never pays.
Morbidity or mortality: illness or death. A weight measures what an option does for the client, never how it sounds.
Source: CRPO/COMPASS Registration Examination resource manual, Table 1.
Format, scoring and strategy
Format, blueprint and scoring
How the CRPO Registration Examination is built as a latent image simulation (what each choice uncovers stays hidden until you commit to it), how Information Gathering and Decision Making are scored as two separate totals you must both pass, and what the blueprint weights.
30 min read · 3,517 wordshas a lesson
Time, reading a section, and the recurring traps
A working method for the examination: managing three hours, reading Information Gathering and Decision Making sections, avoiding the recurring traps, and ignoring the client's reaction as a scoring signal.
40 min read · 4,191 wordshas a lesson
A week-by-week schedule built around this library
An eight-week preparation schedule at six to ten hours a week, covering foundations, blueprint-area practice, timed mocks with error analysis, how to review a simulation properly, remote exam-day logistics, and what follows the exam: results, appeals and the category transfer.
30 min read · 4,101 wordshas a lesson
The five domains CRPO assesses
Competencies 1.1 - 1.5
How theory, developmental and contextual knowledge, self-awareness and cultural understanding govern which options are facilitative on a simulation exam, and how examiners test them without ever asking you to name a theory.
35 min read · 4,001 wordshas a lesson
Competencies 2.1 - 2.3
How the exam tests communication with colleagues, other professionals and organisations, where consent sits inside every collegial exchange, and why most negative options in this domain are courteous acts performed without authority.
30 min read · 3,033 wordshas a lesson
Competencies 3.1 - 3.10
The legal, ethical, record-keeping, supervision and business obligations of a Registered Psychotherapist, and how each one is tested on the exam as a choice made inside a live clinical moment rather than as a rule to be recited.
50 min read · 4,778 wordshas a lesson
Competencies 4.1 - 4.7
The domain that carries most of the exam: orienting the client, holding the core conditions, using the self safely, assessing risk, structuring the work, referring, and ending well, with the option patterns that distinguish each.
50 min read · 4,140 wordshas a lesson
Competencies 5.1 - 5.2
Why a simulation exam tests evidence literacy at all, and how it does it: through claims made to clients, new methods adopted too fast, treatments the client has read about, and the gap between an approach having evidence and you being competent in it.
25 min read · 2,790 wordshas a lesson
All 29 CRPO standards
Practice Standards 1.1 - 1.9
The nine conduct standards that govern your relationship with the College, your titles, your reporting duties, your boundaries and your referrals, including the five-year rule on sexual contact with former clients.
45 min read · 7,729 wordshas a lesson
Practice Standard 2.1
The single competence standard: how to recognise the edge of your competence, when to escalate to consultation or clinical supervision, and when escalation is not enough and you must refer.
20 min read · 2,008 wordshas a lesson
Practice Standards 3.1 - 3.7
Confidentiality, consent, interprofessional communication, electronic practice, unnecessary treatment, the complaints process and the prohibition on conversion therapy: the standards that carry the most weight on the exam.
45 min read · 7,858 wordshas a lesson
Practice Standards 4.1 - 4.2
What qualifies a registrant to supervise, what a supervision agreement must contain, what records each side keeps, and the frequency expectations for registrants practising with clinical supervision.
25 min read · 2,938 wordshas a lesson
Practice Standards 5.1 - 5.6
What must be in a clinical record, how long everything is kept, how reports and invoices must be written, and what secure storage, retrieval and destruction actually require.
30 min read · 4,583 wordshas a lesson
Practice Standards 6.1 - 6.4
Fee schedules, block fees and refunds, what advertising may and may not say, the limits on discontinuing services, and the notice and records obligations when a practice closes, relocates or is sold.
30 min read · 4,645 wordshas a lesson
The Code and how to reason with it
Seven principles, and which one governs which dilemma
Works through all seven CRPO ethical principles, what each demands inside a live session, and how to tell which principle governs when two of them pull in opposite directions.
45 min read · 3,556 wordshas a lesson
Recognition, sequence, consultation, documentation, and a method fast enough to use
The full decision sequence a defensible ethical choice follows, the crossing-versus-violation distinction, when consultation stops being optional, and a compressed heuristic you can actually run inside an eighteen-minute simulation, with eight worked micro-dilemmas.
50 min read · 3,580 wordshas a lesson
RHPA, PHIPA, consent and reporting
RHPA, the controlled act, PHIPA and consent
How Ontario regulates psychotherapy: the RHPA and Psychotherapy Act, the five elements of the controlled act and its exceptions, why an RP cannot communicate a diagnosis, PHIPA from custodian status to breach notification, and consent and capacity under the Health Care Consent Act.
55 min read · 6,322 wordshas a lesson
Triggers, thresholds, timelines and recipients, and what to do when a legal document arrives
Each mandatory report an RP may owe, with its trigger, threshold, clock and recipient; the permissive disclosures including the duty-to-warn territory and the Smith v Jones factors; what to do when served; and a consolidated decision table.
55 min read · 5,891 wordshas a lesson
The legal decisions, as questions you answer one at a time, with the law behind each step
Step through a request to see, copy, correct or delete a clinical record and find what PHIPA and CRPO require: the response, the clock, the narrow refusals, the fee, and how long the record must be kept.
3 practice cases
Step through a proposed treatment and find whose consent you need, what makes it valid, who decides when the client cannot, and how they must decide, with the provision that governs each step.
3 practice cases
Step through what has come to your attention and find what the law requires, permits or forbids, with the provision that governs each step.
3 practice cases
One page each, to print or save as a PDF and keep beside you while you study
The format, the rules of the screen, the room, and what to do in the moment.
Open and print
A method for every section, five questions before every click, and the traps that catch good clinicians.
Open and print
What to report, to whom and how fast, when you may disclose to prevent harm, and what stays confidential.
Open and print
Valid consent, capacity, who decides for an incapable client, children, and consent to share information.
Open and print
PHIPA in brief, disclosure without consent, records, electronic practice, third parties, and after death.
Open and print