Awareness, Attitude, Facilitators, and Barriers of Continuing Professional Development among Nurses Working in Tertiary Care Hospitals of Chitwan

Abstract

Introduction: Continuing professional development is one of the vital aspects of maintaining up-to-date
knowledge and skills among nurses in health care settings to provide standard patient care. This study's aim was to find out the awareness, attitude, facilitators, and barriers of continuing professional development among nurses.
Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted among 287 nurses working in three different
hospitals in Bhartpur, Chitwan. Structured, self-administered questionnaires were used to gather data within the three-month period. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics.
Results:More than fifty percent of the respondents had high level of knowledge and attitude toward continuing professional development, and 77% had participated in CPD activity. CPD enhances professional development (76.9%), knowledge improves skills at work (76.9%), and sponsorship by the organization (55.2%) were considered the key facilitators, while understanding the entire program (73.8%), a shortage of staff (69.7%), not being available for all staff (68.3%), a lack of organizational support (63.3%), and a lack of commitment (63.3%) were the major barriers to CPD participation.
Conclusions: This study found that less than half of the nurses were unaware and low level of attitude towards
CPD. One-third of nurses were not involved in CPD activity. So it is important that the all nurses should participate in the CPD program, which will help to update nurses’ knowledge and skills.