Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Practice and professional development plans (PPDPs): results of a feasibility study

Metadata Updated: September 6, 2025

Background Dissatisfaction with uniprofessional education structures as a means of improving the quality of healthcare has led to proposals to develop ways of integrating professional learning and organisational development.

      Aims
      Test the feasibility of introducing practice and professional development plans using a centrally sponsored project in Wales.


      Design
      Qualitative observational study.


      Study sample
      All 541 practices in Wales were alerted to the project and invited to apply. A selection process was suggested to Health Authorities but not always efficiently conducted: 23 practices were selected and 18 participated in the process.


      Method
      Central funding was made available to health authorities. The project framework was designed by an educational department and conceptualised as the development of personal portfolios linked to one key organisation change in each practice, facilitated by external consultants who would typically hold workshops or other events. An independent researcher using non-participant observation techniques at workshops and practices undertook documentary analysis and fieldwork in four health authorities.


      Results
      Difficulties were encountered with the process of implementing the project: marketing and practice selection inconsistencies delayed the work and it was difficult to recruit practices into the project. The lack of experienced individuals to do the work and practitioner suspicion about perceived 'management' agendas were significant problems. After initial hesitancies most practices appreciated the value of developing wider ownership and commitment to proposed practice changes. Organisations found it difficult to support individual completion of the personal portfolio component of the plans. The ability to develop systems for clinical services was dependent on having already established a culture of effective teamwork in the organisation.


      Conclusions
      This work supports the view that organisational development has considerable potential for bringing about effective change, and individual contributions could form a valuable component of personal portfolios. We believe that the existing structures in education and management in the health service are not yet able to support these processes. Evidence from the fields of risk management and quality improvement all point to the need to develop effective organisational systems and the results of this feasibility study indicate that alternative models of sustaining organisational development need careful evaluation.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date July 24, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 6, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from Healthdata.gov

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date July 24, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 6, 2025
Publisher National Institutes of Health
Maintainer
NIH
Identifier https://healthdata.gov/api/views/3gcp-wcf5
Data First Published 2025-07-13
Data Last Modified 2025-09-06
Category NIH
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 009:25
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://healthdata.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 4485d3eb-c4a5-4477-abc6-e4dedf6ff54f
Harvest Source Id 651e43b2-321c-4e4c-b86a-835cfc342cb0
Harvest Source Title Healthdata.gov
Homepage URL https://healthdata.gov/d/3gcp-wcf5
Program Code 009:033
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 8df22c1119efafbb8b23c3381883d6481e6d78c109355a145747a1ecade0f3cc
Source Schema Version 1.1

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.