The covid-19 pandemic shows that where, when, how, and to whom care is delivered has never been more diverse. In today's healthcare, the people delivering care must be similarly diverse, for the benefit of the profession, its practitioners, and patients. 1 -3 Yet around 90% of the world's nurses are women. 4 Calls are being made, as they have before, to examine ways to promote the profession among men to tackle this imbalance. 1 5 Nursing is an inherently human experience: it is done for humans, by humans, and as humans, and in human experience no one gender claims primacy. Men have had, and continue to have, a valuable contribution to make to nursing, not simply because they are male but because they are human. Men enter the profession for the same reason as women-to care for people.

Context: Continuing professional development (CPD) activities for healthcare professionals are central to the optimisation of patient safety and person-centred care.Although there is some evidence on the economics of healthcare professionals training, very little is known about the costs and benefits of CPD. Methods: This study aimed to review the research evidence on economic evaluations of CPD activities for healthcare professionals. CINAHL, MEDLINE/PubMed, Scopus, Econlit and Web of Science databases were used to identify articles published between 2010 and 2021. Results: Of the 6791 titles identified, 119 articles met the inclusion criteria and were included in this scoping review. The majority of articles were partial economic evaluations of CPD programmes (n = 70); half were from the USA. Studies that included multiple professions were most prevalent (n = 54), followed by nurses (n = 34) and doctors (n = 23). Patient outcomes were the most commonly reported outcome (n = 51), followed by change in clinical practice (n = 38) and healthcare professionals' knowledge gain (n = 19).Conclusions: There is an urgent call for more evidence regarding the economic evaluations of CPD. This is particularly important in view of the rising costs of healthcare globally. The majority of studies included in this review did not provide detailed information on the evaluations and many focused exclusively on the cost of CPD activities rather than outcomes.

No abstract