Abstract
Background. Permanent professional development is a right and obligation of all nurses and midwives (N&M). It is a result of the constant changes in medical and nursing standards as well as the provisions of the law regulating the profession.Objectives. The aim of the study was to diagnose the preferences and problems of N&M during specialization concerning postgraduate professional courses.Material and Methods. The study group consisted of 932 N&M who took part in a specialization exam in Warsaw (autumn exam session of 2014). Women constituted 91% of all respondents. The mean age of the study participants was 48 years (min. 26, max. 64, SD 6.71, median 42, mode 40). The instrument was an original questionnaire. The authors performed a quantitative analysis of the data, assessing the frequency of answers and identifying structural indicators for these answers.Results. Most N&M (66.6%) during specialization take part in postgraduate professional courses 1–3 times a year. There are more internal (38.2%) than external (28.4%) courses. Courses are most often financed by an employer (24.6%) or by the nurses themselves (24.1%) and 8.3% of the courses have more than one source of financing. Forty per cent of the study participants had experienced problems (mostly financial) with taking part in vocational courses. Only 14% of the respondents had ever taken part in an e-learning course.Conclusion. Most of the difficulties of the N&M in taking part in postgraduate professional courses resulted from objective reasons and thus an introduction of the broad, systemic changes in access to postgraduate courses is worth considering. An introduction of modern technologies (online courses) to the continuing education of N&M could improve access to postgraduate courses since time barriers would be overcome and the cost of training would be reduced. There is a need to continue research on the preparation of N&M to take part in e-learning or blended learning courses.
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