Advanced Practitioners would build on the knowledge, skills and experience provided by their profession, as they would integrate the four pillars of Advanced Practice into their work:
- Leadership and Management
- Education
- Research
- Clinical work.
Work Based Assessment is a key element of the preparation for individuals to practice at the level of advanced clinical practice. There will be a formal assessment of achievement of the capabilities, specific to the context of their practice. It is critical to the implementation, acceptance and sustainability of advanced clinical practice that health and care professionals working at this level are widely recognised as having a consistent level of competence. They must also be equally capable of fulfilling the specialist requirements of functioning at this level.
- Works within practice, across PCN, CCG and ICS, multi organisational, cross professional and across care pathways
- Flexible skill set to adapt to, and meet needs of, the PCN population and support public health
- High level of complex decision making to inform diagnosis, investigation and complete management of episodes of care within a broad scope of practice
- Manages undifferentiated undiagnosed conditions
- Able to identify red flags and serious underlying pathology and take appropriate action
- Manages medical complexity
- Actively takes a person-centred approach to enable a shared management plan with the presenting person
- Leads audit and research projects
- Leading QOF within areas of capability
- Multi-professional ACP clinical and CPD supervision across all 4 pillars with relevant training
- Leads education in their area of expertise
- Enables, facilitates and supports change across care pathways and traditional boundaries
Professionals working at a level of advanced clinical practice have a responsibility for their on-going continuing professional development. Employers will need to ensure there are opportunities for continuing professional development to ensure patient safety, the appropriate ongoing development and maintenance of capability.
e-Learning for Healthcare
The following resources can be accessed via e-Learning for Healthcare (e-LfH). E-LfH provides free e-learning programmes which can support you in your professional development.
If you do not already have an account, click here to register using your NHS email address. If you already have an account, please use the same link to firstly log in to access the following resources.
- The Advanced Practice Toolkit has been created as a repository for consistent, credible and helpful resources relating to Advanced Practice.
The below resources support with the Leadership and Management Pillar of Advanced Practice:
The below resources support with the Research Pillar of Advanced Practice:
A further useful resource is Supervision for Multi-Professional Teams, which will provide Advanced Practitioners support with supervision of CPD across all four pillars.
For role specific courses, please use the panel to the left to select a role and view the “Training and Development” tab.
This list is not exhaustive and the programmes available are regularly updated, so we recommend visiting the e-LfH portal and reviewing the available resources via using the “View full catalogue” function, or the “Search the e-learning" function.
If you currently work in primary care, and have found e-learning resources that were helpful, and were not included on the above lists, please let us know on traininghub.nenc@hee.nhs.uk and we will update this resource so that it can be of use to others.
Healthcare providers must invest in and support staff to undertake assessment(s) in practice. Work based assessment must happen within the work setting undertaken by experienced clinicians aware of the benchmark level of capability required for this level of practice, especially where a variety of professions are undertaking advanced practice skills. There will be a strong need for collaboration and working across professional and organisational boundaries to ensure that learning and assessment in practice delivers practitioners who consistently meet the required outcomes in all settings.
ACP trainee should already hold a degree in a relevant Healthcare subject. They are required to undertake a three-year Masters programme in advanced clinical practice which demonstrates learning in all four pillars of advanced clinical practice:
- Clinical Practice
- Leadership and management
- Education
- Research
The below providers provide alternative means of completing the study required for this post:
Degree Apprenticeship Opportunities
The design of these schemes allows for the support of employers and practitioners as well as the development of the learner through both University-led learning and Employer-led learning.
Distance Learning Opportunities
The Association of Advanced Practice Educators (AAPE UK) represents an influential collaborative network of Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) across the United Kingdom (UK) who are providers of advanced clinical practice programmes of education for interprofessional groups. With membership of over 70 Universities and increasing, AAPE UK has established itself as the voice of Advanced Clinical Practice education in the UK.
More information about AAPE UK can be found on their website.
In North East and North Cumbria trainees access university programmes as apprenticeships, which are often fully funded but if there is a 5% contribution to pay (£600) this is reimbursed by Health Education England (HEE).
HEE supports ACP training by offering a training grant of £14,000 per student for primary care (£11,000 for trusts) Advanced clinical practice training is fully funded by HEE.
Tools for Advanced Practice
HEE have developed the Centre for Advancing Practice to oversee the workforce transformation of advanced level practice, by establishing and monitoring standards for education and training, accrediting advanced level programmes, supporting and recognising educational and training equivalence, and growing and embedding the advanced and consultant practice workforce.
The Advanced Practice Toolkit supports ongoing work to enhance the understanding of Advanced Practice (AP). The toolkit aims to benchmark this level of practice and its application to specific roles across clinical practice, leadership and management, education and research. The toolkit provides general information about the AP role as well as specific information aimed at practitioners, educators, employers, commissioners, those planning the workforce across systems and patients/service users.
Employer Resources
The guidance provides the routes of demonstrating advance practice in primary care, how to become an Advanced Practitioner, how to become a Musculoskeletal First Contact Practitioner and how to become a Musculoskeletal Advanced Practitioner.
This updated DES outlines the role of the Advanced Clinical Practitioner and what is expected from the PCN (page 107-108).
This document provides a roadmap of education for practice when moving into First Contact Practitioner (FCP) roles, and onward to Advanced Practice (AP) roles in Primary Care.
This framework builds upon the definition of advanced clinical practice in England. It is designed to enable a consistent understanding of advanced clinical practice, building on work carried out previously across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Research
Produced by the HEE Knowledge Management team, the Evidence Brief offers a quick overview of the published reports, research and evidence on Advanced Clinical Practice.
Jobs
If you are looking for a new position related to this role, we recommend checking both NHS Jobs and HealthjobsUK.
NHS Jobs is the official online recruitment service for the NHS in England and Wales, with over 30,000 jobs posted every month.
Hosted by trac.jobs, HealthJobsUK is among the leading job boards in the health and public sector within the UK.
