The Effects of Online Continuing Education for Healthcare Professionals: A Systematic Scoping Review

Continuing education offers healthcare professionals the opportunity to adapt to the many changes in society and to improve their skills and knowledge to provide optimal care for patients. As technology evolves, healthcare workers can benefit from virtual peer-to-peer and mentor interactions with digital technology as a platform for continuing professional development (CPD). Nevertheless, healthcare professionals’ experiences in CPD in online learning settings have not been tackled clearly. The aim of our systematic scoping review is to investigate the effects of distance and hybrid learning settings in continuing education on learning outcomes and perceptions among healthcare professionals. A quantitative literature search was conducted following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses scoping research, allowing data collection of healthcare study scores from previous articles tackling the subject. A total of 17 articles met the inclusion criteria and were reviewed. We identified four main categories of learning outcomes: knowledge acquisition, skills and performance, participants’ attitudes toward training, satisfaction, confidence, and self-efficacy. This systematic scoping review highlights that continuing distance education improves health professional learning outcomes. Continuing education in online learning setting allow more learning accessibility for healthcare professionals, as it was found to be a solution for temporal and physical constraints.