Significance of Professional Development/Lifelong Learning in Caring For Diverse Populations across the Life Span and Within the Health‐Illness Continuum

Lifelong learning or continuous professional development is important in nursing practice. It equips nurses with the practical and critical-thinking skills required to make decisions that help achieve better health outcomes. Critical thinking skills are essential in nursing to help make critical decisions and solve ethical dilemmas related to caring of a patient (Ludin, 2018). Lifelong learning is also essential to help nurses develop skills that foster collaborative relationships with healthcare teams in the management of a patient’s care continuum. As the world’s population grows fast, new health challenges emerge that may deem past skills obsolete. Accordingly, professional development can help nurses acquire new and advanced skills that help them cope with the challenges of a diverse population. Lifelong learning provides nurses with the knowledge, training, and skills to better understand the experiences of individual patients within diverse population settings, patients’ cultural aspects, and how they affect their response to health care provided.