Needs Assessments approaches to inform Continuous Professional Development for Health Professionals: A Scoping Systematic Review

Abstract

The need for continuing professional development (CPD) within the healthcare profession is well established. A rigorous learning need assessment (LNA) is a crucial initial step in the CPD process. Given the scarcity of the systematic and comprehensive approaches to the process of undertaking a LNA, this scoping review aims to collate the reported methods adopted for conducting a LNA in the context of health professional CPD. The authors searched PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, ERIC, IPA, APA PsycArticles, and Google Scholar for English studies published from database inception until the end of August 2020. A manual search of the reference lists of the included studies was conducted. Two reviewers screened the articles for eligibility using the inclusion criteria. All authors extracted the key data and a narrative approach to synthesize the data was employed. We included 151 studies in the review. The majority of the studies adopted quantitative methods (85 studies; 56.3%). The most commonly used methods to investigate learning needs were surveys alone (81 studies; 53.6%). The majority of studies reported the needs assessment from the perspective of clinicians (144 studies 95.4%) and it was very rare that individual studies investigated the perspectives of more than one stakeholder. Methods of conducting LNA included assessment of various gaps (e.g. knowledge, skill) in the target audience. Self-assessment of knowledge was the most frequently assessed gap (65 studies; 43%). Majority of the studies provided some details describing how the findings of the learning needs assessment were used. The most commonly reported findings were to inform future CPD content and delivery. The findings from this study demonstrate the lack of published evidence of systematic and comprehensive approaches to LNA for the purpose of informing CPD for healthcare professionals. Future studies that aim for developing systemic LAN approaches are recommended.