Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to J C Sheperd.
Training needs analyses have been identified as an essential part in the development of continuing education programmes and their implementation into practice. This study describes the results of a training needs analysis of nurse practitioners across three health authorities in England.
With the plethora of offerings in post-registration education available to nurses it is at times difficult for individual nurses to identify their current and future needs, and more so to go about meeting those needs through a logical educational or career progression. Nursing and its relationship with other health care professionals is also changing rapidly, and post-registration education, in order to keep abreast of the changes has to evaluate its effectiveness and move forward with programmes of study which actually meet the changing need of nurse practitioners within the society they serve. This article attempts to highlight the importance of needs analysis when considering programme planning in the changing climate of post-registration nurse education.
The training needs analysis model described is based on a PhD study initiated by the author in 1989 when three individual schools of nursing in Birmingham were amalgamated to form The Birmingham College of Nurse Education. It was agreed at that time that a rationalization of post-registration education be undertaken as a matter of some urgency, in order to identify a framework for the development of post-registration education, which could go some way in meeting practitioner needs across three educational sites. One way of effectively meeting this objective was to undertake a training needs analysis of qualified nurse practitioners which would also include the identification of nurse managers perceptions of practitioners needs. Following a review of the literature, it was felt that existing approaches to post-registration education did not generally allow for the consideration of training needs and therefore the educational programmes offered were not, in the main, meeting individual practitioner need. The research therefore developed a methodology for effectively assessing the training needs of qualified nurse practitioners and for drawing conclusions, in order to make recommendations for future post-registration education planning and development strategies with the described model being successfully utilized.