Continuing professional development: issues raised by nurses and allied health professionals working in musculoskeletal settings.

Background: Nurses and allied health professionals (AHPs) are required to evidence their engagement in continuing professional development (CPD) in order to retain their professional registration. Many challenges to CPD are reported, but little literature has explored pertinent CPD issues for clinicians with specialist roles or working in specialist services. No literature to date has explored the perceptions of CPD held by patients who receive these specialist services.

The continuing professional development for nurses and allied health professionals working within musculoskeletal services: a national UK survey.

Objectives: To explore the current UK status of continuing professional development (CPD) for nurses and allied health professionals (AHPs) working in musculoskeletal (MSK) services in the UK.

Methods: A web-based survey was developed and used to collect data from service managers, nurses and AHPs who work with people who have MSK conditions, recruited through professional interest groups via email and website notices. The questionnaire was designed following focus groups and telephone conference calls with managers and AHPs from MSK services to ensure content validity.

Engagement with continuing professional development: development of a service model.

Unlabelled: An increasing number of extended-scope practitioner roles for nurses and allied health professionals can be found within the national health services in the UK. There has been little specific research into the facilitators and barriers for engagement with continuing professional development (CPD) of this group of health care professionals. This paper presents a review of the issues surrounding participation in, and influencing factors of, continuing professional development for nurses and allied health professionals.