The Significance of Continuing Education for Registered Nurses

The Significance of Continuing Education for Registered Nurses
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The Significance of Continuing Education for Registered Nurses
1.0. Introduction
The creation of legal, organizational, economic and methodological conditions for the educational opportunities of nursing is considered as one of the most critical steps in the health care system. The provision of continuing education to registered nurses ascertains improvement in the overall enhancement of the health care system. The rationale of providing continuing education is to emphasize the need of improvement in the quality, availability and cost-effectiveness of medical care, effective use of health care resources, and reduction of direct and indirect losses of society by reducing morbidity and mortality rates among the population.
2.0. Literature Review
2.1. Nurse Residency Programs
The “Institute of Medicine and the Joint Commission” encouraged the health care institutes for providing specialized nursing residency program, particularly for the licensed nurses who are recently employed. Coventry, Maslin‐Prothero, & Smith (2015) reviewed the literature to explore the existing residency programs intended for continuing education for nurses and evaluated the significance of these programs for career development of nurses. Their research was based on the integrative review method that presented the perspectives of registered nurses on the professional concerned area of continual education. Data was collected from the researches published from February 2001 to 2015, by using explicit keywords, such as registered nurses, staffing, workload, shortage, continuing professional development, nurse and patient ratio, supply, professional development, continuing education, barrier and deterrent. They extracted 11 studies and utilized an organized approach for data evaluation and literature search as well as for presentation and analysis.
The results indicated that nurse practitioners were reluctant and obstructed to leave to the workplace for attending the program of continuing professional development. Although the study provides extensive evidence, there were some limitations as well. For instance, the search was limited to English language paper, yielding a limited number of researches. Furthermore, the included studies already had weaknesses in the methodological and sampling techniques, so these undermined the validity of this review.
2.2. Organizational Impact of CPD Opportunities for Nurses
The registered nurses are anticipated to take active participation in the CPD programs in order to maintain their professional competence and registration (Cziraki, Read, Spence Laschinger, & Wong, 2018). In this regard, Letourneau and Fater (2015) conducted research to examine the perceptions of registered nurses regarding continuing education while they were working in a health care setting. They used a similar approach as mentioned in the last research by Coventry, Maslin‐Prothero, & Smith (2015). However, as compared to that research, this research involved the articles published between July 2006 and 2013. They used the “Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature” (CINAHL) to search for...