Perspectives on Age and Continuing Professional Development for Nurses: A Literature Review

The need for nurses to participate in continuing professional development (CPD) is growing to keep abreast of rapid changes in nursing care. Concurrently, the nursing workforce is growing older. Ageing leads to changes in biological, psychological, and social functioning. Little is known about the effects of age-related changes on nurses’ CPD. A literature review was conducted to examine whether and how CPD differs across age groups. A framework with five perspectives on age was used in an attempt to distinguish factors contributing to these age differences. Given the limited research on this topic with respect to nurses, we also included studies of workers in general. The literature search revealed 27 relevant studies. In general, older workers appeared less likely to participate in CPD, when considering formal learning activities and late-career workers (older than 50/55 years). We found no clear age patterns for motivation to participate in CPD, for learning outcomes, and for participation in informal and non-formal learning activities. The study showed that more nuanced results are found when studies distinguish at least three age groups. By using different perspectives of age, a comprehensive overview of age-related factors in CPD was generated and gaps in current research were identified. Recommendations for further research are discussed, such as the need for research on whether the types of learning activities that nurses undertake change with ageing. Keywords: Continuing professional development, Age differences, Nurses, Older workers, Workplace learning, Literature revie

Aging Workers' Learning and Employability

In today's time of demographic change and rapid innovation, age and employability as well as the role of learning and development are high on the agenda of policy makers and human resource managers. Empirical studies, however, do not provide consistent evidence for the relation between age and employability and between age and work-related formal and informal learning. While many studies find negative relationships, some other studies present positive or insignificant effects. The inconsistent results may hint at conceptual weaknesses of chronological age as a measure, which are often ignored. One such weakness is the difficulty to disentangle effects of age from effects of cohort and period. Also, since people get more heterogeneous the older they become, the less able is it as predictor. Therefore, we state that chronological age itself may not be the most important factor in predicting work-related learning and employability. Alternative significant predictors might be work centrality, learning self-efficacy and future time perspective. In addition, there are age-related individual and organizational obstacles for work-related learning and employability. Two of the most prominent individual obstacles are a decline in motivation to learn and less capability to learn. Organizational barriers are also erected by negative stereotypes about aging workers and by a lack of supporting learning climate for older workers. Therefore, research on other individual and organizational factors might provide more satisfying answers and contribute to new insights for the management of an increasingly older workforce