Abstract:

Background:
The advancement in healthcare knowledge, medical services, pharmaceuticals and literally revolutionary development of new imaging methods, medical devices and equipment bring about the need of lifelong learning aimed at personal and professional development.

Aim:
Our research is focused on the meaning and position of ongoing self-education within the personal work values scale of general nurses. The sample included general nurses working in hospital settings in the Czech Republic.

Methods:
The method of a comparative study was adopted (comparison of the data from three different years). The data were obtained by means of a questionnaire based on Herzberg´s two-factor theory of motivation. Selected factors of working environment were evaluated and subsequently used to create the scale of personal values. The samples included 3081 respondents in 2006, 1992 in 2011, and 1751 in 2016. The Euclidean distance model and non-parametric tests were used to process the data.

Results:
During the years monitored we observed the tendency to suppress the importance of continuing education within the scale of personal values. (In 2006 it was ranked as 8, in 2011 as 10, and in 2016 as 12 (out of 16).) The decrease was statistically significant and is more profound with the increasing age – the older the nurse, the less interested in self-education.

Conclusion:
Modern healthcare services and equipment require literate and self-educated professionals. Lifelong learning enhances competitiveness and employability of healthcare staff. Nurses should be encouraged and motivated by their superiors to learn and react to an ongoing development in their field.

Keywords:

Lifelong learning, nurse, comparative study.