Impact of Continuing Professional Development Versus Traditional Continuing Pharmacy Education on Learning Behaviors

Objective: To assess the effect of continuing professional development (CPD) on perceptions of learning behaviors compared with traditional continuing pharmacy education (CPE).

Design: Randomized controlled trial.

Setting: Kaiser Permanente Colorado (KPCO) from August 2008 to June 2009.

Participants: Licensed pharmacists employed at KPCO.

Intervention: After completing a basic CPD course, participants were randomized into a control group that continued with traditional CPE or an intervention group that completed three CPD workshops and used the CPD approach for their professional learning needs. At baseline and follow-up, all participants completed a study questionnaire on perceptions of their learning behaviors.

Main Outcome Measure: Comparison of responses to questionnaire items at follow-up.

Results: 100 pharmacists were enrolled. The intervention (n = 44; 7 lost to follow-up) and control (n = 47; 2 lost to follow-up) groups were similar at baseline. At follow-up, a higher percentage of intervention than control participants reported changing their learning behaviors/activities sometimes (41% vs. 0%, P < 0.01) or frequently/always (18% vs. 4%, P < 0.05). More intervention than control participants responded that they frequently/always participated in learning by doing (61% vs. 36%, P < 0.05), identified specific learning objectives (93% vs. 30%, P < 0.01), and documented their learning plan (82% vs. 13%, P < 0.01). A higher percentage of intervention than control participants responded that they adhered to their learning plan partially/to a large extent (80% vs. 15%, P < 0.01) and more than three-quarters of the intervention participants responded that they partially/to a large extent achieved their learning objectives ( P < 0.01).

Conclusion: Pharmacists who adopted a CPD approach were more likely to report that various aspects of their learning behaviors improved as a result of education activities compared with pharmacists who participated in traditional CPE.