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In the second of two articles, Hazel Pennington looks at how managers in a radiotherapy department identified staff educational needs and developed a programme to meet their aspirations and the objectives of their organisation
Summary
This is the second of two articles looking at the use of training needs analysis frameworks to streamline the provision of continuing professional development (CPD) in healthcare settings. The first article described the process and academic strategy used to design the framework. Part two describes how one department has used the tool to identify and address staff training and CPD needs, and how this has helped meet individual, departmental and organisational objectives.
Keywords
Continuing professional development, staff training, training needs analysis
There is an abundance of literature discussing the benefits of continuing professional development (CPD) for all health professions (Gould et al 2007, French and Dowds 2008), and successive government policies (Department of Health (DH) 1999) and documents such as Working Together, Learning Together (DH 2001) have attempted to embed lifelong learning in healthcare services.
Research has demonstrated a link between CPD opportunities in relation to job satisfaction and nursing retention (Tovey and Adams 1999, Sheilds and Ward 2001). Although CPD requires individuals to take responsibility for identifying their own learning needs and evaluating whether these needs are met (Hancox 2002), employers remain responsible for providing staff with the resources and opportunities to undertake CPD.
Increasing recognition of the value of CPD has led many professional bodies to establish, or work towards establishing, CPD as a mandatory requirement, often linked to statutory registration. Mandatory CPD is a new concept in some professions and there is apprehension about it among staff, but this can be addressed through supportive working environments (Austin and Graber 2007).
There is considerable variation in the interpretation of the term CPD (Lawton and Wimpenny 2003) and of the crossover between the essential training needs of professional groups and the general broadening of their knowledge base.
One of the advantages of the training needs analysis (TNA) project described in the first article (Staniland et al 2011) is that the tool can be used to investigate both the CPD and essential training requirements of staff. This article describes how the tool was used in a radiotherapy department, but...