Background To improve professional development, it is important to understand the motivational factors behind nurses’ participation in specific types of continuous professional development activities. Effort–rewards imbalance (ERI) posits an imbalance between high efforts spent at work and low rewards sometimes received in turn. However, professional nurses have various ERIs that can influence their reasons to participate in continuous professional development activities. Aim The purpose of this article was to propose a model for selected ERI factors, which motivate professional nurses to participate in continuous professional development activities. Setting Two hundred and forty-one professional nurses working in a public national referral hospital in Namibia participated in the study. Methods Survey data on professional nurses’ reasons and motivations to participate in the professional development activities were analysed using a literature-based framework on ERI and reasons for participation in continuous professional development. The survey data were analysed for reflective relationships of ERI and reasons for participation in continuous professional development activities. A confirmatory factor analysis method using IBM SPSS AMOS version 23 was used to develop and validate the effort–reward motives for a continuous professional development model. Results Four effort-reward imbalance factors were derived from sixteen CPD motives. The reflective factors were (1) extrinsic efforts, (2) intrinsic efforts, (3) reward motives, and (4) over-commitment motives. The four conceptual factors made up a second-order effort-reward motives factor for the nurses’ reasons to take part in continuous professional development activities. Conclusions The results of this study show that professional nurses consider taking part in continuous professional development activities in order to carry out their work better but not as a way to increase chances of promotion. The study also concluded that the older professional nurses tend to have higher intrinsic effrot motivation than their younger counterparts. Thus, nurses could use these findings to understand the reasons which motivate them to develop professionally.

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