Facilitators and Barriers of Continuing Professional Development from the Perspective of Health Care Providers in Erbil City

Abstract

Background and objective Continuing professional development is a major component of employee development worldwide. Good understanding of it, makes greater ability to incorporate research findings to improve it. This study aims to address enhancing factors beside the negative influences on Continuing professional development.

Methods A cross-sectional quantitative study was conducted in Erbil city, Iraqi Kurdistan Region, in the major general hospitals. The data were collected from 249 healthcare providers (physicians, dentists, pharmacists, medical staff, lab assistants) working in these hospitals during 2022. A questionnaire was designed for data collection which included questions about demographic characteristics of the participants, and questions about facilitating factors and barriers regarding continuing professional development.

Results More than 94% of participsnts (235 out of 249), agreed that continuing professional development is important for their carrier. More than half of them (55.8%) participated in continuing professional development activities. Role of managers, encouragement by peers, having good places, qualified trainers and sponsorship were detected as main facilitating factors for implementation. Among the mentioned factors, trainers had the highest number (225) of positive answers. Cost, time, improper presentation ways and not involving the right employees, were declared as the main barriers.

Conclusion Continuing professional development needs to be explained to health employees since about half of them had no knowledge about it. Policymakers and health managers need to enhance facilitatinf factors that play positive roles in implementation and try to overcome barriers in order to make changes toward professionalism.