In Denmark, the continuing professional development CPD of consultants is the shared responsibility of employers, represented by heads of department HOD and consultants [1]. This policy encourages self-governance rather than requiring points to practice or regular re-certifications as may be the case in other healthcare systems [2, 3].
Among the few formal agreements to guide the governance of shared responsibility in Denmark is that consultants have a right to spend a minimum of ten paid working days a year on CPD [4]. Surveys indicate that a considerable proportion of consultants spend less than ten days annually on CPD.
To understand what may affect the translation of the right to CPD into practice and to inform possible policy adjustments at the department level, it is conducive to understand how shared responsibility for CPD is managed. Five specialties were purposively selected: anaesthesia, oncology, orthopaedic surgery, paediatrics and clinical microbiology to ensure representation across specialties and ensure variation in terms of economic support from the pharmaceutical industry.
No clinical microbiologists responded to our invitation. We invited HOD for an interview. Furthermore, we asked them to identify a newly appointed and a more senior consultant for an interview. We prepared one interview guide for the HOD and another for consultants Figure 1. All interviewees consented to participate in the study. The interviews lasted minutes. Here, we apply the term trade-off to describe the situated process of weighing elements in CPD activities, i.
Trade-offs between these elements became the empirical focus of this analysis, and generalisations are made at the level of these elements. Critical theory was chosen as an overall analytical inspiration for its ability to illuminate the nexus between individual choices and structural conditions []. We conducted 26 individual semi-structured interviews in in four specialties and nine departments in the Capital Region of Copenhagen.
