Continuing Education for Primary Health Care NPs: Barriers. Learning Needs, and Delivery Preferences

Barriers to continuing education (CE) have the potential to limit nurse practitioners’ (NP) knowledge and skills in providing current, evidence-informed, and relevant healthcare. Continuous quality improvement and curriculum planning are needed to ensure that CE programs are meeting the needs of nurse practitioners and to identify and reduce barriers. Many NPs work in distinctive settings (e.g., long-term care) or with specific patient populations (e.g., those with mental illnesses) and require specialized knowledge. In addition, continually evolving information requires NPs to ensure relevant and safe practice (e.g., new drugs, laboratory tests, and evidence that informs changes in practice). A mailed survey of 565 primary health care NPs in Ontario sought to identify their learning needs, barriers associated with accessing the Council of Ontario University Programs in Nursing and other CE opportunities, and delivery preferences for CE offerings. For those respondents working in clinical practice (n=289), 80% indicated that CE was extremely important and 98% responded that they intended to participate in CE over the next 12 to 24 months. The top five learning needs were mental health (39%), chronic disease/chronic care (27%), specialty care (e.g., neurology, dermatology) (25%), updates (e.g., innovations, drug updates) (22%), and women’s health (21%). Of the courses offered by the Council of Ontario University Programs in Nursing, the largest number of NPs (46%) indicated that they intended to take Pharmacotherapeutics within two years. The top five barriers to CE included difficulty taking time off work (43%), financial barriers (38%), distance to travel for CE (34%), family obligations/time away from family (29%), and fatigue (23%). Strategies to overcome barriers to CE and preferences for types of courses and course delivery will be discussed.