Re-Imagining Continuous Professional Development for all Healthcare Professionals: Insights from Resource-Constrained Environments

The benefits of continuous professional development in enhancing health professionals’ adaptability to change are widely recognized. Additionally, it has been shown to improve the conduct and competency of health professionals, enabling them to innovatively deliver high-quality patient care. Consequently, continuous professional development has become a vital resource for health institutions to ensure they meet quality assurance standards in patient care.

However, evidence regarding the scalability and sustainability of the benefits of continuous professional development remains limited and fragmented. Most importantly, insufficient attention is paid to how contextual factors influence engagement, practice, and outcomes in continuous professional development. To date, persistent disparities exist not only in access to continuous professional development opportunities but also in the quality of learning experiences between resource-poor and resource-rich settings. Compounding this issue is the assumption that models and theories of continuous professional development are equally relevant across both resource-rich and resource-constrained environments.

These assumptions also extend to the approaches used to facilitate continuous development. Although the adoption of technology to promote and support engagement in continuous professional development has increased, evidence remains conflicting and unclear as to whether this enhances access to quality continuous professional development or perpetuates inequities between resource-rich and resource-constrained contexts. Furthermore, this consistent oversight and lack of contextual sensitivity result in inadequate rigor when assessing continuous professional development outcomes, leading to weak evidence regarding both the short-term and long-term effects of continuous professional development across various contexts.

This Research Topic aims to explore the unique challenges of continuous professional development in low-resource settings and to highlight context-relevant innovative approaches to address these challenges. Given the importance of continuous professional development, it is crucial to consider the differences between resource-rich and resource-constrained settings to bridge the significant gaps in our understanding of what works, for whom, and in which contexts. This approach enables us to prioritize resource-sensitive strategies for continuous professional development that effectively address disparities in access to quality continuous professional development

Therefore, to deepen our understanding of continuous professional development in resource-constrained settings, we invite a body of theory-informed research utilizing diverse methodologies, focusing on but not limited to the following themes:

· Critical analysis and evaluation of formal and informal continuous professional development approaches in resource-constrained environments (i.e., the conceptualization of and the lived experiences of health professionals' motivation and engagement in continuous professional development across healthcare professionals and settings).

· Comparative analysis of continuous professional development issues (i.e., policies, best instructional designs, and their effectiveness) across resource-rich and resource-limited contexts.

· Issues of equity, diversity, inclusion, and access in continuous professional development (i.e., studies that emphasize equity-disaggregated results based on marginalized health vs mainstream health professions, urban vs rural, etc.).

· Critical analysis and evaluation of the application of theories, typically developed in resource-rich contexts, in continuous professional development research within resource-constrained settings.

· Critical review and comparative analysis of compulsory and non-compulsory implementation of continuing professional development in resource-constrained settings.

· Exploration and development of context-sensitive, psychometrically sound self-report instruments and standardized objective measures to evaluate formal and informal interventions supporting continuous professional development.

· Downstream clinical (patient-related) and economic impact of continuous professional development.

· Barriers to and strategies for tailored, cost-effective, scalable, and sustainable continuous professional development in resource-constrained environments in different care settings (rural, urban; global south, global north).

· Strategic and innovative approaches and interventions to improve health professionals’ meaningful participation and engagement in continuous professional development in low-resource settings.

· The future of continuous professional development in resource-constrained settings (i.e., new theories and approaches for technology-mediated adaptive and personalized learning).

· Critical analysis of the potential role of technology and artificial intelligence, as well as the challenges associated with their use in continuous professional development in low-resource settings.

· Strategies for fostering and supporting continuous professional development through the design and implementation of GenAI-mediated programs in low-resource settings.

We welcome articles exploring these various themes across health professions as well as at the interprofessional level.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Continuous Professional Development, Healthcare Professionals, Resource-Constrained Settings, Innovative Approaches, Equity and Access, Scalability, Sustainability, Digital Health Education

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.