In April, our regular ‘last Wednesday of the month’ Tweetchat brings an exciting change to the calendar as it will be hosted by two clinical speech and language therapists.
Maria Papadaki @mariap_SLT and Sophie Whitehead @S_J_W_9 from the Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust (BHRUT) have planned this chat – and, of course, will be supported by all the ReSNetSLT Team.
This Tweetchat on 28th April 2021 (7.30 pm – 8.30 pm UK time) will focus on Continuing Professional Development (CPD), sharing successes, innovative ideas, outcomes and impact on clinical practice.
You can access the paper here – and read on below for Maria and Sophie’s summary & questions to structure our conversations:
CPD allows professionals to develop their skills and knowledge and is fundamental to ensure the delivery of high-quality person-centred care.
Although CPD is mandatory for someone to demonstrate their fitness to practice in accordance with professional body regulators, there is ambiguity on how the impact and effectiveness can be evaluated.
This paper uses the Executive Agency for Health Consumers (EAHC) definition of CPD, which is:
“Systematic maintenance, improvement and continuous acquisition and/or reinforcement of the life-long knowledge, skills and competences of health professionals. It is pivotal to meeting patient, health service delivery and individual professional learning needs. The term acknowledges not only the wide-ranging competencies needed to practice high-quality care delivery but also the multi-disciplinary context of patient care”.
We noted that their definition of CPD also specifies the development of skills for research:
Healthcare practitioners may struggle themselves to articulate the impact of their CPD, which then undermines the value of investing in it, and there are questions around the challenges of measuring its effectiveness.
How was the study carried out?
The study focused on answering the overarching research question: ‘What mechanisms in what contexts would generate what desirable CPD outcomes?’
Data was collected from sources including a literature review on CPD, an online survey and a stakeholder workshop.
What did the study find?
The results showed four theoretical strategies for attaining maximum benefit from CPD activity;
(1) Transformation of individual’s professional practice,
(2) Transformation of Skills to Meet Society’s Changing Healthcare Needs,
(3) Transformation of Knowledge to Enable Knowledge Translation,
(4) Transformation of Workplace Culture to Implement Workplace and Organizational Values and Purpose.
This case study concluded that promoting CPD leads to direct advantages for the individuals, their clients and the organisation.
It also highlights the importance of organisation and team’s shared values to facilitate CPD.
But of course, it is essential that there is support for individuals to change their practice based on their learning/new skills gained through their CPD activities.
What is your experience?
At BHRUT, we provide acute Speech & Language Therapy services across two busy hospital sites.
As a team, we value the importance of CPD and try to incorporate it into our busy clinical caseloads. We support CPD in our team through:
- Protected CPD time each month
- Incorporating 5 in 5 presentations in handovers and meetings
- Service development/ audits/ project work across all bandings which is presented at the end of rotation showcases
- Joint sessions across specialities
- Monthly, more in-depth CPD sessions
- Sharing learning, e.g., from courses/ critically appraised articles
Questions to structure our tweetchat:
This Tweetchat will be focused around the following questions –
- What does CPD mean to you?
- How do you prioritise CPD within your caseload? (And how does the CPD time you take impact your clinical practice?)
- Has your team come up with any innovative ways to include CPD in your day to day practice?
- What is your experience of gaining support to make evidence-based changes to implement your learning from CPD activities? (Is this any different in relation to CPD for research skills versus clinical skills?)
- How can clinicians evaluate the impact of CPD on healthcare/service user outcomes?