Measuring the Impact of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) learning on patient experience outcomes in the workplace- A Realist Synthesis and Evaluation

Background: The paper presents the outputs from a Health Education England funded project to devise and test a CPD Outcomes Tool that identifies mechanisms for measuring the impact of CPD learning on individual, team and... [ view full abstract ]

Background:
The paper presents the outputs from a Health Education England funded project to devise and test a CPD Outcomes Tool that identifies mechanisms for measuring the impact of CPD learning on individual, team and organisational effectiveness in relation to improvements in quality of care and patient experience outcomes in the workplace. Using Realistic Synthesis and Evaluation (Pawson & Tilley 1998) the research questions were:
1. Which indicators are useful for providing information on individual and team effectiveness in relation to improvements in quality of care and patient experience in the workplace?
2. How can these impact indicators be synthesized to develop a tool to measure individual and team effectiveness in the workplace?
3. What are the indicators of organisational effectiveness appropriate to include in a CPD impact tool?
Methods:
Phase 1 of the project involved gathering, analysing and synthesizing data from a number of sources (i) literature review (ii) national survey of 8 stakeholder groups, (iii) critique and review by international expert advisory board (iv) documentary analysis of student work, (v) analysis of project phases by CPD experts in field of education and health and social care. This resulted in identification of 4 theories of transformation and associated action hypotheses and construction of a tool which captures the relationships between the context of learning, mechanisms, impact indicators and outcomes for each group (individual, team, service, organisation). The second phase of work focused on answering the question ‘what works for whom and in what circumstances?” by testing the tool out with different stakeholder groups. Findings, Recommendations, Conclusions:
The CPD Impact provide san integrative approach to demonstrating the impact and effectiveness of learning in any health and social care context for different users. It provides guidance on what measures can be employed to demonstrate impact and how these may be linked to evidencing quality improvements in patient experience and outcomes. Whilst the indicators of effectiveness require further testing at national level, there is real potential for the tool to be used by multiple stakeholders for understanding the economic, social, political and professional benefits of learning on quality care