Advanced Practice Toolkit
1. What is an Advanced Practitioner?
“Advanced clinical practitioners (ACPs) are healthcare professionals, educated to Master’s level or equivalent, with the skills and knowledge to allow them to expand their scope of practice to better meet the needs of the people they care for. ACPs are deployed across all healthcare settings and work at a level of advanced clinical practice that pulls together the four ACP pillars of clinical practice, leadership and management, education and research.” [16]
Historically, the advanced practice role in primary care has been based in nursing [19], but increasingly other professional backgrounds, including paramedics, pharmacists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists are entering the role [44; 45]. They may be employed at a practice, at place level (within place based partnerships), at neighbourhood level within Primary Care Networks (PCN) or at system level within Integrated Care Systems (ICS). Advanced Practitioners are usually considered equivalent to a band 8a role in secondary care [19], and Advanced Practitioners demonstrate considerable autonomy. Mann et al also reference the importance of independent prescribing to many, but not all, Advanced Practice roles.