How Health Professionals Perceive Continuing Education’s Contribution in Improving their Relationships with Patients and Peers

Abstract

Background: continuing professional education, espe- cially in the healthcare sector, contributes significantly to updating specialized personnel’s know-how and improving their overall professional and interpersonal skills. Never- theless, it is necessary to be integrated as a broader human resource management strategy, directly and continuously interrelated with parameters such as job satisfaction, moti- vation, working conditions, interprofessional cooperation, and the quality of the health services provided. Aim: to study health professionals’ attitudes toward continuing professional’s education impact on their relationships with peers and patients and investigate their incentives for participating in it. Method: 185 health professionals, coming from the scientific and administrative staff of two NHS hospitals, took part in a cross-sectional exploratory study from February to April 2020. The participants were asked to complete a structured questionnaire consisting of 38 closed-type ques- tions, which is translated into Greek and weighted accordingly, Participation Reasons Scale (PRS). The statistical analysis of the data collected was carried out with IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 21.0, at the statistical significance level of 0.05 Results: the analysis of the data collected revealed con- tinuing education’s statistically significant positive impact on professional competence and services provided to patients, especially for fixed-term employees (b=0.2, 95%CIb= 0.1-0.3, p=0.025). Additionally, the study participants identified this positive effect as the strongest incentive for participating in such programs (scales’ total score: M= 5,5, SD=1,1, Mdn=5,7). Conclusions: health professionals recognize a variety of incentives to participate in continuing professional education activities, which are associated to varying degrees with their subjective need for work and personal further development.