Evaluation of Adherence to Continuing Professional Development Guidelines of Nursing Council of Kenya by Nurse Practitioners in Meru County

Abstract

Continuing professional development (CPD) is training offered by professional institutions and bodies intended at updating knowledge, skills and competences of practicing workers to improve the quality of service delivery. Continuing professional development seeks to positively link the needs and aspirations of individuals with educational activities, for development of their potentialities and for the socioeconomic and political development of a nation or state. Despite the adoption of Continuing Professional Development in Kenya, the conformity to the CPD guidelines of Nursing Council of Kenya is still inadequate as quality nursing and competence fails to meet the stipulated standards. Analysis of literature indicate that adherence to continuing professional development standards has been an issue of concern in many countries. This study aimed at evaluating adherence to Continuing Professional Development guidelines of Nursing Council of Kenya by nurse practitioners in Meru County. A descriptive survey research design was used to evaluate the adherence of nurse practitioners to CPD guidelines of Nursing Council of Kenya. Fisher's et al (1998) formula was used to draw a sample size of 264 nurses. Data was analyzed using statistical package for social sciences software (SPSS version 22.0). The raw data was cleaned, coded, keyed into SPSS software, analyzed, and then presented using pie charts, bar graphs and frequency tables. The qualitative data was analyzed to get correlations among different variables through coding, observing emerging themes and forming categories. The findings revealed that there exist gaps in nurse practitioners' adherence to Continuing Professional Development guidelines of the Nursing Council of Kenya. Based on the study findings, it is, therefore, concluded that CPD activities in Meru County still need reforms to enhance adherence. A future research of examining effects of CPD activities to quality of health care by regression analysis technique is therefore, recommended.