The future of CPD for general practitioners, registered pharmacy staff and general practice nurses in Scotland - qualitative responses from a national survey

ABSTRACT

In the United Kingdom, undertaking continuing professional development (CPD) is required for revalidation with regulatory authorities for general practitioners, general practice nurses and registered pharmacy staff – pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. A survey of CPD preferences and activities of these four professions has been published and this paper focuses on one qualitative question in the survey: ‘Please describe any changes that you anticipate in the way in which you will undertake CPD over the next 12 months.’ Responses were analysed using content analysis, then codes and themes were developed into a coding framework. 1,159 respondents provided comments to the question and five themes were identified: options for learning, time, appraisal and revalidation, people in transition and use of technology. There was a desire for face-to-face courses, for interactive learning and for variety of learning methods. Respondents valued learning with others and Practice-Based Small Group Learning was considered to be flexible and promoted inter-professional learning and socialisation. Lack of time for learning was seen as a barrier for respondents. Respondents considered that CPD was needed to support them as their roles developed in primary healthcare.

KEYWORDS:

• Primary health care
• surveys
• questionnaires
• learning

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all respondents for completing the survey and NES clerical staff who assisted with administration. The authors thank pharmacy, nursing and medical staff within NES who helped with survey design, construction and dissemination.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical Approval

As this was an evaluation of an educational service the authors considered formal ethical approval was not required. This was confirmed by advice from the NHS Research Ethics Committee.