PROFESSIONAL NURSING DEVELOPMENT

Nursing professional development is the lifelong process of active participation by nurses in learning activities that assist in developing and maintaining their continuing competence, enhance their professional practice, and support achievement of their career goals” (American Nurses Association [ANA], 2000, p. 4). Staff development, academic education, and continuing education are all pieces of nursing professional development, and each plays an important role as nurses gain knowledge and confidence in their abilities to care for patients. As a professional organization, the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses (AMSN) is committed to providing continuing education in as many formats as possible, to enable members in their quest for knowledge.
Continuing education is “systematic professional learning activities designed to augment the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of nurses and therefore enrich the nurses’ contributions to quality health care and their pursuit of professional career goals” (ANA, 2000, p. 5). Continuing education activities include conferences or workshops which have learner and presenter in the same place at the same time; distance learning where the learner and the presenter are either present at the same time but not in the same place (such as occurs with audio conferences), or present even at different times and different places (such as occurs with on-line or Internet courses run in asynchronous formats); and independent learning activities in which the learner at his own pace and own time completes an activity, such as reading a journal article.
Continuing education has been required in many states for relicensure as well as by nursing certification boards as one method their certificants could retain their credentials. Opponents to mandatory continuing education insist that there are no studies that prove that changes in nursing practice occur as a result of education activities. Some states have discontinued the practice of requiring continuing education for relicensure, stating that it is difficult to prove that it changes practice and that the cost of validating the submitted documentation is not worth the effort. This author has had difficulty finding results of any studies used in either proving or disproving these arguments. Regardless, AMSN has now started a long-term study of those who use the organization’s independent study activities, particularly articles in the MEDSURG Nursing journal continuing education (CE) series, to elicit information about how the user foresees using the knowledge gained from the activity.

Adult Education Philosophies

The differences in opinion about verifying CE completion, especially for independent activities, focuses on adult education philosophies. If an individual believes that adult nursing professionals cannot be trusted to be honest about whether or not they completed an activity, then a method of making the learners prove they did complete it is necessary. The other side of that discussion is that there is no longer a requirement for those attending a live activity to complete a posttest (as had been done many years ago). The evaluation should be about the value and quality of the activity for the participant, not as a way for the presenter to determine how much the participant learned. The practice of requiring a posttest upon completing an independent activity is most often used as a method of assuring completion of the activity, not as a method of determining how much knowledge the participant achieved.

What occurs in reality is that if the participant does not answer the questions correctly, the contact hours are not earned. Therefore, if the participant does not test well, or if the test is poorly constructed, the participant will not earn CE credit even though he or she may have spent a great deal of time in the activity and may actually have learned things not being tested on that particular instrument. Opponents of this practice have voiced the concern that the perception, by participants, is that they are not trusted to be truthful by those planning and implementing the activities if they state they completed an activity; they must prove it by passing a test.

Those in continuing education have grappled with these concerns over the last few years. Therefore, evaluations of CE activities include a query of the participants about whether they believed they learned anything, but not specifically about how well, or what exactly, they believed had been gained. However, only those completing independent activities also must prove an ability to pass a test.

An impact on requirements for the learner to verify participation or completion of an education activity has occurred because of changes in the requirements by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation (ANCC-COA) of those providing or approving CE activities. The ANCCCOA’s criteria reflect changes in technology as well as educational philosophies. Technology has affected CE in a significant way because activities and courses can be offered in many different venues, blurring the very clear distinction that could be made before about “live” versus “independent” education activities. This has become a point of discussion because some activities now combine both those methods of learning; for example, Web-based modules are largely independent but have embedded components requiring the learner to be in a live chat room at a predetermined time with an instructor for a specified period of time (the definition of a “live” activity).

Writer : Sally