Strategic Research Alliance Final Report : Review of Continuing Professional Development in Nursing

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is important in generating and sustaining capability and in ensuring high quality, person-centred, safe and effective nursing care. In the UK, changes to models of funding for nursing CPD have raised concerns about the opportunities available for nurses to meet the requirements for revalidation of registration, their ability to provide adequate supervision of future students in relation to the new NMC standards of proficiency, and the potential impact of reductions in CPD access to nursing recruitment and retention. Contemporary evidence suggests that it is not only the opportunity to access CPD that is important to the provision of quality care, but also the ability to transform knowledge and skills learnt into practice within diverse practice settings. The purpose of CPD therefore is not only transformation of an individual’s practice but also transformation of workplace culture and context. For the purpose of this report, we follow Manley and Jackson (2020) in suggesting that transformation “implies radical ways of doing things to reflect the values aspired to; it is not about quick wins or key performance indicators.” There is then a need to understand the evidence about what factors maximise CPD impact at the individual, team, organisational and system level. Following initial scoping work, the Strategic Research Alliance (SRA) working group, in consultation with Professor Kim Manley and Carolyn Jackson, agreed to complete a rapid review to consider this evidence focusing on the specific question: "What are the factors that enable or optimise CPD impact for learning, development and improvement in the workplace at the individual, team, organisation and system level?"