A Consultant Nurse in Primary Care is a highly experience and expert individual who leads on improvements in patient care. They use their experience and knowledge of advanced clinical practice with education, research and leadership to enhance patient services and outcomes within general practice settings. Consultant Nurses in Primary Care bridge the gap between complex clinical needs with professional development and often manage conditions independently, as well as providing resource for other nurses and healthcare professionals. They demonstrate expertise across Clinical Practice, Education, Research, and Leadership.
- Provides strategic leadership and innovation in PCN-led service development.
- Leads on workforce planning and the professional development of nurses across the PCN.
- Drives improvements in population health outcomes, reducing health inequalities and improving access for underrepresented communities.
- Leads research, evaluation, and implementation of best practice to transform service delivery.
- Operates independently at an expert level, leading complex care management and service improvement initiatives.
- Works across traditional boundaries to integrate care with secondary, community, and social care partners.
- Adapt communication using active listening, clarification and awareness of verbal and non-verbal cues.
- Communicate empathetically and inclusively, responding to language needs, health literacy and preferences.
- Communicate effectively across face-to-face, remote, group and triadic consultations.
- Manage challenging environments, competing agendas and time-limited consultations safely.
- Use clear, jargon-free verbal, written and digital information to support understanding and empowerment.
- Build and sustain effective relationships with people, carers and families.
- Evaluate social, cultural, economic and environmental influences on health.
- Apply population health approaches, including All Our Health and Making Every Contact Count.
- Use population data to identify need and reduce health inequalities.
- Recognise psychosocial factors and utilise social prescribing and community support.
- Enable shared decision-making using motivational interviewing and personalised care planning.
- Promote self-management, resilience and community networks.
- Work within scope, seeking advice and escalating concerns appropriately.
- Collaborate across multidisciplinary teams and care settings to optimise care.
- Communicate effectively with colleagues using verbal, written and digital methods.
- Refer appropriately across primary, secondary and voluntary sector services.
- Contribute to service improvement, shared learning and team wellbeing.
- Demonstrate ethical practice, promote equality and maintain professional development and resilience.
Nursing Training Resource Document
The Primary Care Training Hub have collated a list of all available e-learning courses to the nursing workforce in primary care. These courses include resources from e-Learning for Health, The Learning and Development Hub, NHS elect and ESR. This list will be reviewed and updated every 3 months so we recommend to regularly check this document for newly added courses.
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.
- Resources for nurses deployed into primary and community care: The learning resources provided here contain essential training materials to support Registered Nurses returning to work or being redeployed into a primary and community setting. This includes, GP surgeries, community and care home settings. The training here is intended to equip you with the basics and get you started and complement any training that you will receive in a local practice setting.
- All Our Health: This course contains the All Our Health bite-sized e-learning sessions to give health and care professionals an overview of topics including key evidence, data and signposting to trusted resources to help prevent illness, protect health and promote wellbeing.
- Wound Care: This e-learning programme aims to support the health and care workforce in developing the knowledge and skills required to enable appropriate wound care to be delivered to people in any setting.
- Respiratory Disease Toolkit: This toolkit is a digital version of the multi-professional respiratory training guide that offers consistent, credible and helpful resources relating to the prevention and management of respiratory conditions.
- Dementia: The dementia e-learning modules have been designed to familiarise health and social care staff with approaches they can take to enable people living with dementia and their family carers to live as well as possible.
- Public Health Professionals: Public Health Professionals work on a wide variety of topics and often use specialist knowledge and skills. The resources found in the portal support the development of some of the technical and specialist skills within public health.
- Five Ways to Wellbeing: This course introduces the concept of wellbeing and describes how the Five Ways to Wellbeing can be implemented in a variety of settings to promote it.
- Work and Health Programme: This programme is intended to improve healthcare practitioner’s confidence to support patients with long term or chronic health conditions, via brief conversations in routine consultations. It does not cover work-based health initiatives, but instead focuses on the relationship between health professionals and patients.
- Nursing Roles: The Primary Care Training hub have created a list of courses that you may find suitable if you are currently in a nursing role and looking for e-Learning resources. Please note, this list is not exhaustive.
- Essentials in patient care: The learning path explores some of the key focus areas for patient safety including; pressure area care, nutrition, antimicrobial resistance, patient rights and mental capacity. This is provided as part of the Global Learners Programme.
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.
To ensure the role is supported within primary care, Consultant Nurses in Primary Care should have access to appropriate clinical supervision and an appropriate named individual in the PCN to provide general advice and support on a day to day basis. Clinical Supervision could be conducted by:
Hold a qualified degree in nursing or registered nursing degree apprenticeship (RNDA). Local universities that offer the above qualification in nursing:
Hold a Masters degree and is working towards a PhD, Educational Doctorate or equivalent research qualification. Local universities that offer Masters and PhD/Educational Doctorate:
Equivalent Research Qualifications:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Doctor of Medicine
- Professional Doctorates
- Doctorate by Publication
Has extensive experience in advanced clinical leadership, service development, workforce planning, and system-wide innovation.
Registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) and maintains revalidation in line with NMC requirements.
100% of actual salary plus defined on-costs, up to the maximum reimbursable amount of £106,407 over 12 months.
Awaiting guidance and further information
Awaiting guidance and further information
Professional Bodies Resources
There is a Digital Primary Care workspace on FutureNHS that includes resources on a range of topics including: online consultation toolkit, how to develop a highly usable practice website guidance and good practice guidance on digital primary care topics.
The NHS add live modules to this planner on communications, GP Online and digital inclusion, with other modules currently in development.
These FAQs answer some common questions on the Digital and Transformation Lead role, produced by Staffordshire Training Hub.
Tools for Practice
Chapter 5 relates to the digitally-enabled care that will go mainstream across the NHS.
A space to share insights and experiences for everybody working to improve the NHS and social care system’s use of data and digital technology.
Role Overview
This updated DES 2024/25 outlines the role of the Digital and Transformational Lead and what is expected from PCNs (page 110-111).
An overview of the role, including scope of practice, responsibilities, entry requirements, training and development, supervision, funding and resources.
Relevant Research
The following articles written by Tara Humphrey are available to read on the THC Primary Care website:
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.
