Elsevier

Nurse Education Today

Volume 29, Issue 7, October 2009, Pages 740-745
Nurse Education Today

The relationship between continuing professional education and commitment to nursing

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2009.03.008Get rights and content

Summary

Nurses have a responsibility to undertake continuing professional development to enable them to keep abreast with changes in health care. Acquiring new knowledge and skills is essential for nurses to practice safely in new and extended roles. Opportunities for continuing professional development are thought to increase retention. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between undertaking continuing professional development and commitment to the profession and the employing National Health Service trust and to explore any differences between nurses in standard and extended roles. A questionnaire survey was undertaken with 451 nurses employed in three contrasting trusts. The questionnaire incorporated a validated scale to measure organisational and professional commitment. Three hundred and eighteen (70.5%) of the nurses had undertaken continuing professional development over the previous 12 months. Ninety nine nurses (22%) had received only mandatory training over the same period. There was no evidence of a relationship between professional and organisational commitment and undertaking continuing professional development. There was no evidence that specialist nurses in extended roles had undertaken the developmental continuing professional development that would be expected in order for them to acquire new competencies and skills.

Section snippets

Background

In the United Kingdom (UK) the Agenda for Change reforms have linked nurses’ pay and progression in the National Health Service (NHS) to their ability to demonstrate advancements in competencies and knowledge (Department of Health, 2003). Thus continuing professional development (CPD) has become an explicit part of the nursing role. Much has been written about this important issue from the perspective of managers and nurse educators (Furze and Pearcy, 1999, Lawton and Wimpenny, 2003, Gould et

Literature review

The topic of nursing commitment has global relevance because of the international impact of the current nursing shortage of nurses and the implications that staff turnover has for nursing numbers (Wagner, 2007). Two types of commitment are differentiated in the literature: organisational and professional commitment (Allen and Meyer, 1997).

Organisational commitment has received considerable attention in research studies concerned with a wide variety of occupational groups because it has

Aims

The aims of the study were to:

  • 1.

    Explore the relationship between CPD undertaken by clinical nurses and their levels of professional and organisational commitment.

  • 2.

    Explore differences in professional and organisational commitment between nurses in standard and extended roles.

  • 3.

    Compare CPD undertaken between nurses in standard and extended roles.

Study design

A short survey questionnaire was designed especially for the study (see Appendix 1). Both types of commitment were measured with a validated scale developed

Response rate

Response rate was 64.9% (451 out of 695 questionnaires). All were fully completed. There was no significant difference in response rate between the three trusts (see Table 1).

Characteristics of the Sample

Most of the nurses were women under 40 years of age, with few aged less than 25 years, or more than 50 years. Most were employed full-time. The trusts were diverse and different from each other in terms of: age distribution; ethnic mix; level of education; length of time since qualifying; and band (professional grade) (see

Discussion

Nurses’ scores for organisational and professional commitment were low in this study, possibly reflecting their poor levels of satisfaction with employment in the UK compared to other countries (Camerino et al., 2006). Such findings are disappointing considering the government’s investment in nursing CPD in the UK (Department of Health, 2001, Department of Health, 2003, National Audit Commission, 2001).

There was no evidence of differences between nurses in the different trusts despite

Conclusion

The findings of this study have shown that only a small percentage (7.5%) of nurses had not undertaken CPD of any kind during the last 12 months. Although the nurses were employed in contrasting trusts, all appeared to make very similar provision for CPD. Nurses in senior, specialist roles were not as likely to have undertaken mandatory training to update important key competencies as colleagues in standard roles, and even more worryingly, there was no evidence that they were more likely to have

Acknowledgements

Financial support for this study was provided by the General Nursing Council Trust for England and Wales. We would also like to thank Marina Fontenla for help with data collection.

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