From Two Dimensions to Multidimensions: A Mechanistic Model to Support Deliberate CPD Development, Coordination, and Evaluation

What are the mechanisms by which our CPD interventions create our outcomes? Despite ever growing evidence regarding the effectiveness of continuing professional development (CPD), there are ongoing debates about CPD's utility in improving health professional behavior and patient health. Evaluations of CPD demonstrate substantial variability in efficacy, the causes of which remain largely unclear in part because CPD programs are conventionally evaluated as “black boxes.” Namely, evaluations typically account for program inputs, outputs, and outcomes, but they do not explicitly evaluate the mechanisms driving intended outcome changes. This emphasis on outcomes without considering that the processes underlying them can lead to obscuring or misinterpreting causal relationships and to missing unintended program effects. Our questions about CPD effectiveness are incomplete: our focus must shift from the 2 dimensions of whether CPD works or does not work to the multidimensions of how, why, and in what contexts it works or does not work.. Click here to access the abstract.