Evaluation of Continuing Professional Development for Physicians — Time for Change: A Scoping Review

Perspectives on Medical Education (06/02/23) Vol. 12, No. 1 Hosseini, Shera; Allen, Louise; Khalid, Faran; et al.

A scoping review sought to define methods for assessing continuing professional development (CPD) programs for physicians. The researchers identified 101 English-language studies on evaluating physician CPD programs. Over half originated from North America and were set in hospitals or communities; general practitioners were the main participants in many analyses. Studies designed along a pre-post-test template were most common, followed by only post-test templates. The CPD programs covered various areas of interest, types, delivery formats and number of sessions. In summarizing frequencies of studies satisfying each criterion across the no, partial and yes categories, no study scored "yes" for all 14 criteria and only one scored "yes" for 13. Ninety-seven studies scored a "yes" for six or fewer criteria, while 45 scored "yes" for one or fewer. Most studies either did not theoretically elaborate on their CPD intervention design or only explained it in relation to current evidence without theoretical explication on feasibility. Only 10 studies employed an evaluation framework, with most users favoring the Kirkpatrick framework. "Salient areas in need of deliberation highlight considerations of broader and more long-term impacts of the interventions and their processes, use of theory and evidence when designing and evaluating the CPD programs, adherence to evaluation frameworks, augmenting quantitative approaches with qualitative measures to detect unintended outcomes and lastly reflection on the potential causal pathways through which the programs may exert their impacts," the researchers noted.

Read More