Continuing professional development (CPD) for nurses is intrinsically linked to quality improvement, improved patient safety and outcomes, career progression, and recruitment and retention, as well as being integral to nurses’ lifelong development. However, despite these advantages, there is no framework to develop, accredit, deliver and measure the outcomes of CPD in the UK.

This article outlines the elements of a CPD framework for excellence for children’s nurses that was developed by the lead for excellence in nursing practice at Nottingham Children’s Hospital, England, in collaboration with lead educators and facilitators of CPD activities. To develop the framework, they scoped existing CPD activities and mapped the content to a quality standards framework. Each of the 39 CPD activities identified were then submitted to the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust Institute of Care Excellence for accreditation, with the aim of providing quality assurance. The framework for excellence aims to support the delivery of credentialed high-quality, evidence-based information that meets the needs of children’s nurses, with the future capability to measure learning outcomes.