Evaluating the Impact of Continuing Professional Development within Intensive Care Unit Nurses in the UK

Abstract

Background: Continuing Professional Development (CPD) within a nursing context is the process by which nurses engage in ongoing activities and reflection that may eventually result in a complete control over an individual’s personal leaning and development. Such course of action actualises working context and acts as a source of inspiration and a motivation towards the achievement of goals and objectives within the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nursing context. Objective: The aim of this systematic literature review is to find out the impact of CPD among ICU nurses in the United Kingdom (UK). Methods: To achieve this aim, an online investigation for literature related to CPD in the UK is done using databases and internet search engines. In total, five academic databases proved to be important in isolation of materials for use in addressing the CPD of ICU nurses in the UK. These academic databases included MEDLINE, Cochrane, PubMed, CINAHL, and ProQuest, all of which provided multilingual academic sources of both primary and secondary data about CPD and associated programmes. The search strategy also employed the use of five academic search engines, which included Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com, and Baidu, again, all of which provided multilingual data regarding the selected topic. The inclusion and exclusion criterion is employed to outline in this paper. Results: Eight academic sources is selected to discuss the provision of CPD in the UK, outline the views of ICU nurses regarding CPD and to address the various barriers facing CPD programmes in the UK. Conclusion: The research concluded that CPD programmes are very beneficial to practicing nurses since they keep the nurses’ knowledge and skills up to date considering the changing nursing practice. The overall view of nurses regarding CPD is that the programmes should be retained and continued for a better nursing workforce. Certain barriers were identified as key to interfering with the provision of CPD among ICU nurses including financial constraints, nursing shortage and lack of adequate time due to improper scheduling.