Continuous professional development (CPD) has gained prominence in the last decade to meet improved self-development and health care services among health professionals. Being practitioners serving clients in health care, therefore, necessitates the importance of the physiotherapist’s participation in activities of CPD. This paper aims to identify how physiotherapists view CPD, barriers to its progress and its impact on healthcare practice. This is a qualitative study with one-to-one interview sessions involving open-ended questions to facilitate free flow of idea that are rich with information. Twentytwo physiotherapist (17 females and 5 males) participated. Four main themes were generated following analysis: (i) comprehension of what is CPD (ii) outcome of CPD (iii) barriers to undertaking CPD and (iv) strategies to improve participation in CPD. Further sub-themes were generated from the themes suggestive of physiotherapists’ awareness and concerns related to CPD activities and problems encountered when embarking on CPD participation. In conclusion, physiotherapists should recognise the importance of participation in CPD activities either for self-development or to provide effective health care services. The main barrier to CPD activities that was identified was a support system that facilitates enhancement in such activities. This has major implication such as mandatory participation in CPD among staff and for managers to ensure that an effective mechanism is in place such as funding, schedule events and moral support.
Nurses need to participate in CPE to update their knowledge and increase their competencies. This research was carried out to explore their current practice and the future general needs for CPE. This cross-sectional descriptive study involved registered nurses from government hospitals and health clinics from Peninsular Malaysia. Multistage cluster sampling was used to recruit 1000 nurses from four states of Malaysia. Self-explanatory questionnaires were used to collect the data, which were analyzed using SPSS version 16. Seven hundred and ninety-two nurses participated in this survey. Only 80% (562) of the nurses had engaged in CPE activities during the past 12 months. All attendance for the various activities was below 50%. Workshops were the most popular CPE activity (345, 43.6%) and tertiary education was the most unpopular activity (10, 1.3%). The respondents did perceive the importance of future CPE activities for career development. Mandatory continuing professional education (MCPE) is a key measure to ensure that nurses upgrade their knowledge and skills; however, it is recommended that policy makers and nurse leaders in the continuing professional development unit of health service facilities plan CPE activities to meet registered nurses' (RNs) needs and not simply organizational requirements.
PURPOSE: A cross sectional descriptive study, which involved government hospitals and health clinics from Peninsular Malaysia sought to identify the continuing professional education (CPE) needs and their readiness for E-learning. This paper focuses on the first phase of that study that aimed to determine the factors that influence nurses' participation in CPE.
METHODS: Multistage cluster sampling was used to recruit 1,000 nurses randomly from 12 hospitals and 24 health clinics from four states in Peninsular Malaysia who agreed to be involved. The respondent rate was 792 (79.2%), of which 562 (80%) had participated in CPE in the last 12 months.
RESULTS: Findings suggested that updating knowledge and providing quality care are the most important factors that motivate participation in CPE, with respective means of 4.34 and 4.39. All the mean scores for educational opportunity were less than 3.0. Chi-square tests were used to test the association of demographic data and CPE participation. All demographical data were significantly associated with CPE participation, except marital status.
CONCLUSIONS: Implementation of mandatory CPE is considered an important measure to increase nurse's participation in CPE. However, effective planning that takes into consideration the learning needs of nurses is recommended.