Advanced Clinical Practitioner
Advanced Clinical Practitioners (ACP) come from a variety of professional backgrounds including nursing, physiotherapy, pharmacy, paramedics and occupational therapy. They are experienced healthcare professionals with a Masters level award or equivalent who have developed their skills and knowledge to take on expanded roles and scopes of patient care.
People often assume that Advanced Clinical Practitioner are all nurses due to the title of Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) being well known in the NHS. However, as the number of different professionals grows within this role, it will change and become the norm to have a Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) of Advanced Clinical Practitioners supporting the rest of the medical team.
For more information see: What Is An Advanced Clinical Practitioner? - ACPIN
The PCN must ensure that the practitioner both:
Is educated to master’s degree level in relevant area of expertise; and
Has the capabilities of advanced clinical practice set out in section one of the Multi-professional Framework for Advanced Clinical Practice in England. https://www.hee.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/documents/multi-professionalframeworkforadvancedclinicalpracticeinengland.pdf
The PCN must ensure that each band 8a advanced practitioner has the following additional responsibilities:
They will assess and triage patients, including same day triage, and as appropriate provide definitive treatment (including prescribing medications following policy, patient group directives, NICE (national) and local clinical guidelines and local care pathways or make necessary referrals to other members of the primary care team
They will be able to manage undifferentiated undiagnosed conditions and identify red flags and underlying serious pathology and take appropriate action
They will use complex decision making to inform the diagnosis, investigation, and complete management of episodes of care within a broad scope of practice
They will actively take a personalised care approach and population centred care approach to enable shared decision making with the presenting person
They will have completed the relevant training in order to provide multi-professional clinical practice and CPD supervision to other roles within primary care, for example first contact practitioners and the personalised care roles.
Older Adult Mental Health
There is a new National Virtual Community of Practice for Trainee and Qualified APs working in older Adult Mental Health (still relevant for those working in e.g Frailty/Care homes etc that will see a lot of Mental Health issues).
This occurs every last Wednesday of the month from 12:30 to 13:30.
Those wishing to attend need to email jodie.ley@nhs.net for an invitation