Maximising the impact of continuing professional education on practice

1. Maximising the impact of continuing professional education on practice Liz Clark, Jan Draper and Shelagh Sparrow Faculty of Health and Social Care, The Open University and the OU–RCN Strategic Alliance

2. Workshop objectives • To provide a brief overview of the development of the Impact on Practice (ImP) framework • To demonstrate the online version of the framework • To interrogate the framework and discuss its potential use by healthcare educators (and other stakeholders) when designing, delivering and reviewing post-registration programmes

3. Workshop outline • Introductions • Overview of the ImP project • Group work to interrogate the paper-based and online versions of the framework, prior to its early release and its evaluation phase • Feedback

4. Original aim of the ImP project: To develop a tool to evaluate the impact of continuing professional education (CPE) on healthcare practice The project was carried out between 2006 and 2008 and funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), as part of its Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF3)

5. Context Masses of anecdotal evidence of the benefits of post registration learning on nursing practice • Investment in continuing professional education (CPE) • Rhetoric of the benefits of CPE/lifelong learning • Evidence-based and outcomes-driven culture in healthcare services and needs-led education • Lack of evidence of the added-value of CPE • Vulnerability to cut-backs in funding (e.g. 2006/07) • Political drivers

6. Context(cont.) • Limitations of current evidence • Small-scale and short-term studies in one locality • Over-reliance on learner satisfaction • Retrospective methods (errors of recall and bias) • Benefits to service users are assumed, but rarely assessed directly

7. In-depth conversations with key stakeholders about the proposed project: • employers • patients • students

8. According to stakeholders, what is needed is an approach that is… • Easy to understand and use • Not research • Not programme-specific • Dynamic • Cost-effective

9. Our approach • Literature review (health and social care andeducation literature); emerging themes: • Organisational culture • Role of the manager • Link between education provider and employer • Contributions from an UK-wide Expert Advisory Group • Two interactive conference presentations (one national and one international) and a symposium

10. Our approach(cont.) • commissioners of education • managers • health and social care educators • service users/representatives from patient organisations • learners • Conversations with key stakeholders to develop/refine the framework:

11. The ImP Framework • The four core domains of the ImP framework are: • education provider • learner • manager • organisation The patient/service user voice is reflected across all four domains

12. The ImP framework

13. Our journey so far… • Seizing the moment • Upstream thinking • Complexity vs ease of understanding/use Next steps… • Interrogation of framework by expert panel • Evaluation of this untested theoretical framework in a range of healthcare settings

14. Any questions? Contact details: Liz Clark: e.h.clark@open.ac.uk Jan Draper: j.draper@open.ac.uk

15. Group work