Let Nursing Times support you with your CPD

A few years ago Nursing Times conducted some research into Nurses’ continuing professional education.

Our findings probably won’t surprise you – most nurses had to fund their own CPD or take annual leave for their studies. Many had to do both.

We weren’t surprised either, but it gave us the evidence we needed to launch Time out for Training, a campaign to ensure employers allocated, and ring-fenced, enough money to fund nurses’ CPD. The campaign even gained support from then health minister Ann Keen – herself a former nurse, who was outraged at our findings.

Times have moved on and NHS budgets have become even more stretched, and we know anecdotally that once again funding for nurses’ CPD is tight.

Being pragmatic about it, we realise that no amount of campaigning will release funds when the NHS has to save £20bn on budgets that are being reduced in real terms. So we’re trying to offer practical help instead.

For the past two years we have been running Nursing Times Learning. This offers online units that take an average of two hours to complete, covering a range of subjects and costing just £10 + VAT. We’ve been refining the system and developing a range of new units focusing on key nursing priorities, and now have over 30 units live, with more in the pipeline.

The beauty of online learning is that you can do it whenever you have internet access, and can save your work and come back to it if you need to.

Until recently, subscribers to Nursing Times were entitled to five units free. Many of them used up their allocation, and we realised not only that nurses value online learning, but also that this is one way we can support you in fulfilling your PREP requirements. So now, subscribers have unlimited access to Nursing Times Learning units, with personalised certificates to demonstrate successful completion. That means you can study fundamental care topics or more specialist subjects, and provide evidence to your managers and potential employers that you have done so. We hope you enjoy the units, and welcome suggestions for new topics to cover