Advanced Practitioner (AP)

An AP is very much part of a multi-professional team and can support patients, their families and carers with a broad range of clinical conditions and social circumstances. APs can review and manage both acute and chronic presentations, show-casing a portfolio of skills relevant to differentiated and undifferentiated care. This can involve physical assessments, prescribing medications (including medication reviews), requesting further investigations and interpreting their results, referring to specialist teams, advance care planning and working with the wider health team to address local population health needs. The AP role also incorporates a research focus which can involve clinical audits, review of QOF targets, service improvement projects, evaluation of clinical guidelines and promote evidence-based practice.

• Manage episodes of patient care 
• Enhance clinical skill mix 
• Improve patient access and experience 
• Ease pressure on GP workload 
• Improve retention and support a sustainable business model 
• Develop leadership capability in your organisation 
• Supervision of other clinical roles 
• Undertake quality improvement initiatives 
• Support and contribute to a culture of learning 

If you would like to know more about the role of an ACP in primary care, please contact the advanced practice lead for primary care, Ewan Armitage:   ewan.armitage@nhs.net 

Application for MSc funding (Advanced Practice)

How to apply: application for MSc funding are welcomed at various points throughout the calendar year. The main window for applications is typically between November and January but there are usually additional opportunities to submit a funding application. Please click here for details a to when applications are being received.

NHS England Funding

The North West Faculty for Advancing Practice 2024 / 2025 funding request process

Readiness Checklist: as part of the application process, your organisation will be asked to complete a readiness checklist, to determine its suitability for supporting a candidate through an MSc programme and ultimately employ them as part of the workforce. Please click here for a copy of the checklist.

Business case: your organisation will be asked to confirm that a business case has been completed for the introduction / development of an AP role within the workforce. This will be discussed during the application process to determine if funding is appropriate.

Clinical Supervision:  effective and high-quality supervision of trainee APs, as well as those who are qualified and working at an advanced practice level, is paramount to funding being approved. This will also form part of the funding discussion and ultimately, central to whether any application will be approved. Click here to view the minimum standards of supervision.

Unified Learning Environment:  ULEs are a key component in the development of trainee APs. For each GP practice where a trainee AP is working, a ULE will need to be in place. If you have any questions around this, including the process for being audited, please contact Ewan Armitage (advanced practice lead for primary care in Cheshire & Merseyside):   ewan.armitage@nhs.net

Accredited programmes: a full list of accredited programmes in England can be found via this link, although the preference is for a university in the North West region

If you as an employer are considering submitting an application for MSc funding, please speak with Ewan beforehand so he can talk through both the process and criteria in more detail.

NHSE Faculty for Advancing Practice across the North West have now launched a late submission funding application process to support the educational training funding for MSc Advanced Clinical Practice Autumn 2025 and Spring 26 cohorts.

The deadline for late submissions is 5pm on Wednesday 4 June 2025 and the outcome of the process will be sent to organisations as soon as possible and no later than the end of June 2025.

Please follow this link to the faculty webpage containing the guide to implementing and funding and the online form to submit the funding request submission: Here.

AP Peer Support Group

Held monthly for 1 hour via Teams. The purpose of these meetings is to develop a community of practice for first contact practitioners and advanced practitioners (including training grades) in primary care in Cheshire & Merseyside. It’s an opportunity to share any learning and identify CPD opportunities which may be of interest. Attendees are invited to present case studies or simply raise any work-place issue relevant to their clinical practice. Guest speakers are invited to present on a specific topic and the group is also used to disseminate information relevant to first contact and advanced practice in primary care in the region. 

If you would like to find out more about this group, please contact Ewan Armitage (Advanced Practice lead, primary care, Cheshire & Merseyside) 

ewan.armitage@nhs.net 

This section will detail specific continuing professional development opportunities for advanced practitioners. For other funding requests and general queries, please access the CPD Nurse & AHP section of the website https://cmthub.co.uk/cpd/

National Institute of Health Research (NIHR)

Vision

The UK is a global leader in the delivery of high quality, commercial and non commercial research that is inclusive, accessible and improves health and care.

Mission

Enabling the health and care system to attract, optimise and deliver research across England. We do this as part of the NIHR’s overall mission to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research.

Research Delivery Network (RDN) purpose

RDN is part of the overall NIHR structure and is one of 12 RDNs that cover the whole of the England geography. It supports the successful delivery of high-quality research in health and social care settings. It endeavours to increase capacity and capability of the research delivery infrastructure at sites whether those staff sit in hospitals, GP practices, community settings, hospices, community services. Where staff and people sit and there is a research question that impacts upon health in its broadest sense, research could take place.

This means research can:

• Reach more people
• Address changing population needs
• Support the successful delivery of high-quality research
• Increase capacity and capability of the research delivery infrastructure for the future ensuring sustainability

As a health professional you can be involved in research whether that be supporting NIHR Portfolio research studies that is already designed and could open locally to you OR whether you are keen to become a researcher of the future, all opportunities are an option. We are always happy to have discussions locally around how we can provide manpower or funding to support research delivery locally.

Please see links to NIHR portfolio studies click on link to see what is open currently in hospitals and primary care settings

Primary Care Portfolio Studies

Please drop us a line, your local Northwest RDN which covers Cheshire and Mersey, Lancs and South Cumbria and Greater Manchester at our single point of contact nw.rrdn@nihr.ac.uk

Here are the essential links to help you answer your questions:

• Keep up to date with AP Faculty Website: Regional Faculty for Advancing Practice – North West – Advanced Practice (hee.nhs.uk)
• Essential to work through prior to completing Expression of Interest form: Organisation AP readiness checklist
• HEE Multi-Professional Framework for Advancing Practice