The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7190 p385-391
23 March 2002

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British Medical Journal (www.bmj.com)

CPD is effective but does it offer value for money for professionals?

Inadequate evidence exists for the cost-effectiveness of continuing professional development, according to researchers from the United Kingdom and United States writing in the BMJ (2002;324:652).

They say that evidence for the effectiveness of CPD is expanding but suggest that this alone is not a sufficient criterion for implementation. "For scarce resources to be devoted to CPD, the relative cost-effectiveness of different educational interventions must be established, and those offering the most value for money must be implemented," they say.

The researchers found only nine studies that attempted to evaluate the economic value of CPD for health care professionals. These were of varying quality and did not allow any empirical conclusions to be drawn.