Continuing Professional Development: Do we need it?
CPDme Academic Statement for the requirement of CPD
Development within the health and social care services are moving at such a rate that no professional should be content to rely on the familiarity and skills achieved through their undergraduate or postgraduate education and training. The general public holds it for granted that the health service will keep their knowledge and skills up-to-date (DH, 2001). The government shares these expectations and is eager for all health and social care professionals external and within the National Health Service (NHS) to have compulsory Continuing Professional Development (CPD) schemes and is actively working towards a consistency and reliability approach across all professions (DH, 2000).
Continuing Professional Development & Personal Development Plans (PDP) for healthcare staff is an important and essential strategic instrument for improving and moving forward important factors such as education and personal achievement. The Department of Health (DH) have supported this statement and identified that CPD is an effective way of achieving and maintaining standards of care and deliverance. This in whole supports the improvement of the health of the nation and motivates and retains high quality staff and helps develop lifelong learning skills (DH, 2005). In support of this statement, since 2001, the government have spent around £1bn per year on educating methods to facilitate CPD as a process to improve health and social care professionals' skills (Belfield et al 2001). It is suggested that this figure will gradually increase until the entirety of the NHS becomes either an all graduate profession or individuals start to adopt a more positive attitude towards lifelong learning (Peck et al 2005).
It is apparent that the efficiency of participating in CPD / PDP and ergonomic criteria is needed. Effective resources for ambulance staff are scarce and money used to facilitate both CPD & PDP could otherwise be spent on other expandable resources or indeed direct patient care needs. There are very few literature reviews that show cost effectiveness and analysis in both provision of healthcare within the ambulance service and education (Drummond, 1997). However, it is apparent that cost effectiveness and financial analysis in pre hospital education regarding research is indeed sparse (Levin and McEwen 2000). This is because of limited availability of skilled researchers and limited availability of staff to get involved with training schemes. Because of this an antipathy towards economic analysis could potentially restrain ambulance policy and the absence of significant results in studies of educational effectiveness (Levin 2001).
References
Department of Health (2000) The NHS Plan: a plan for investment, a plan for reform. Department of Health, London.
Department of Health (2001) Reforming Emergency Care - Practical Steps. Department of Health, London.
Department of Health (2005) Taking health care to the patient: transforming NHS ambulance services. Department of Health, London.
Drummond WF (1997) Methods for the economic evaluation of health care programmes. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Levin HM, McEwan G (2000) Cost effectiveness analysis. Sage, London.
Levin, H.M. (2001) Cost effectiveness analysis in education. Sage, London.
Peck C, McCall M, McLaren B, and Rotern T (2005) Continuing medical education and continuing professional development: International comparisons. British Medical Journal 320:432-435.
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