The professional development community has attempted to evaluate productivity and the effects of our work for many years.
Regardless of the evaluation strategy used, this has been a difficult task, primarily because of the inability associate education to specific patient or nurse outcomes.
However, if we examine education as an intervention to resolve a problem, then its outcome is the post intervention result. This requires that one assume that education is at least one of the interventions that contribute to a change in practice or work environment. However, for many, this is a stretch that is difficult to accept and is viewed merely as an assumption.