Nurses’ attitudes regarding Continuing Professional Development in a district hospital of Greece

Aim : The aim of the present study was to evaluate the concept of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in a provincial hospital and analyze whether the CPD can offer opportunities for Advanced Professional Development (APD) in nursing staff. Method and material: The study involved 23 clinical nurses of tertiary education employed in α provincial hospital. Collection of data was performed using postal questionnaire. Statistical analyses (descriptive) were conducted using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences 13.0 (SPSS, Chicago, Il, USA). Results: 43% of the participants were working in the sector of emergency incidents, 22% in the surgery clinic, 17% in the Intensive Care Unit and 9% in the Pathology and Cardiology clinic, respectively. 22% of the participants had not participated in any kind of postgraduate training programmes, 30% had attended two programmes and the largest percentage of 48% had attended only one programme. 30% of the CPD activity took place in hospital and 70% in Centres for Vocational Training. Regarding the benefits of CPD, 82.6% of the participants answered that CPD helped them to plan their nursing care, whereas 17.4% that CPD helped them to thing about what to do in practice. 78% of the participants reported the existence of barriers to CPD. Regarding difficulties to attend the CPD activity, 17% reported that were unable to attend it because the clinic was too busy, while 83% reported difficulty because the CPD programme was already booked. Conclusion: Nurses appeared to understand the concept of CPD as a part of lifelong learning and faced difficulties to measure the effectiveness of CPD in use when dealing with a range of issues. The study findings confirm that CPD remains a major issue for clinical nurses in Greece, providing opportunities for advanced professional development. The study findings should help those proving the CPD to plan more effectively and have implications for staff requirements and retention.