continuous nursing education from nurses’ point of view

introduction: continuous nursing education (cne) is considered as a means of proper reply to the rapid changes in health care delivery and promoting professional standards of current practice among nurses. professionals in cne believe that cne programs must be community-based but this need assessment had not been carrid out  for nurses .this study was conducted to investigate the nurses' opinion about cne, and to determine the educational resources as well as nurses' educational needs. materials and methods: this descriptive cross sectional study was conducted on the nursing units in kermanshah in 2003. the members of target population were 100 nurses who provided direct patients care in their units. the data were collected by an approved questionnaire which consisted of demographic information and questions regarding the objectives of the study. the responses were measured by a single-item likert scale. the data were analyzed by using  descriptive statistics. results: 100 subjects were studied, in which 37%  were male and 63% were female . they had at least ten years  working experience with mean age of 34.15 ± 5.3 years.. 36% of them were single and 64% were married. they spent not only more than 48 hours in continuous nursing education in the past two years, but also 5.9 hours monthly. 65% of them used textbooks, and 68% participated in conferences to meet the immediate learning needs. on the whole, the motivation for their participation, obstacles in continuous nursing education and need for these educational programmes were important from their viewpoints. conclusion: providing the best value for continuous nursing education is an important subject . in order to increase nurses' motivation and to minimize the obstacles, we should improve this educational programme by increasing their number in hospitals, decreasing the workload, participating in continuous nursing education programmes and giving special time for these programmes.