Aligning continuing professional development (CPD) with quality assurance (QA): a perspective of healthcare leadership

Ensuring patient health and safety is one of the main goals of continuing professional development (CPD) and quality assurance (QA) departments. Many models of integration have been developed as an effort to maximise outcomes and connect both departments through this common goal of patient safety and quality of patient care. Yet little research has been conducted on the integration of both departments in different healthcare settings. This study explored the perspectives of leaders (N = 12) in healthcare settings regarding the current state of collaboration and gaps between CPD and QA. In this descriptive study, data was collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews guided by directive prompts. Questions were selected to identify healthcare leaders’ perspectives on the relationship between CPD and QA in their settings. All recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim. An inductive analytical approach was applied for thematic analysis of transcripts. The results demonstrated the participants’ understanding of collaboration processes between CPD and QA. Currently, the only shared goal reported was that CPD teams should provide logistical support to QA teams. Several other factors of collaboration were lacking, reinforcing the need for more efforts to integrate both departments. This study identified a lack of integration between CPD and QA departments but provided evidence of the existence of a basic level of collaboration in the healthcare setting. In addition, this study demonstrated the practical application of D’Amour’s collaboration model. Further exploration to generalise the results in other healthcare settings is required.