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British Dental Journal based Continuing Professional Development: A survey of participating dentists and their views C. J. Tredwin, A. Eder, D. R. Moles and M. J. Faigenblum Br Dent J 2005; 199: 665–669

Comment

Since the introduction of the requirement for all dentists to undertake a minimum of 250 hours of continuing professional development (CPD) over a five year period, a number of dental journals in the United Kingdom have offered their readers the opportunity to answer questions based on papers and articles published in the journals, then have their answers assessed and thus qualify for hours of verifiable CPD. Such activity can take place at any time, in any place and usually at little financial cost to the participants. It is therefore unsurprising that it has proved popular with UK dentists. Since July 2003, the British Dental Journal (BDJ) has combined with Eastman Continuing Professional Development (ECPD) to offer BDJ readers the opportunity to collect up to two hours of verifiable CPD per issue. By the end of 2004 over 7,200 had registered to take part in the scheme, of which over 90% stated that they would be happy to be contacted by ECPD.

This paper reports the results of a survey which sought to establish a profile of the dentists who had taken part in the scheme and to elicit their views on the suitability and level of the CPD questions and their perceptions of the outcomes. A one page postal questionnaire was sent to 400 dentists drawn at random from those who had stated that they would be happy to be contacted by ECPD.

A very good response rate of 78% was achieved. The age distribution of the respondents was spread across all age groups. Eighty-two per cent worked in general dental practice, 10% in the Community Dental Service and the remainder in hospitals, universities, the Defence Dental Service or industry. The high response rate may in part be due to the well-focused and succinct nature of the questionnaire.

The vast majority of respondents reported that they did not use journal based CPD as their sole mechanism for obtaining CPD and also attended courses. There were high levels of reported satisfaction with regard to personal CPD needs, the applicability of the articles to CPD needs and the levels of questions. The majority of respondents claimed that their knowledge had increased and that they had changed elements of their clinical practice as a result of taking part in the BDJ/ECPD initiative.

The results should be encouraging to the BDJ and ECPD as respondents were clearly happy with the initiative and felt that it had been of benefit to them. As such, it may well encourage more readers of the BDJ and other journals to take part in journal based CPD in the future.