Early adopters helping to embed advanced practice principles

This is part 2 of a two part blog about our Principles for advanced practice. You can read the first part, about how the principles support person-centred care and how we developed them.

Since launching our new Principles for advanced practice in June, 37 organisations have already signed up to be early adopters.

It’s fantastic to see such a broad range of settings involved including higher education institutions, health boards and trusts in each of the four nations of the UK, integrated care systems, and community health services such as prison services, GP practices, care homes, the independent and voluntary sector, and out of hours services.

These reflect that advanced practice takes place across all of health and social care, and will help us learn about the successes and challenges experienced in implementing the principles.

What are the Principles for advanced practice?

Our Principles for advanced practice aim to bring clarity and consistency to advanced nursing and midwifery practice across the UK. They outline our expectations of best practice for both individual practitioners and employers, and they help the public understand what to expect from an advanced practitioner.

The response to the principles has been really positive, with many employers and stakeholders highlighting how they’ll support them in developing their governance, thinking about how they support their advanced practice workforce, and ensuring their own systems and processes align.

Our early adopters

To make the principles a success it’s vital that we understand how organisations are embedding them and developing their governance processes. This will also support the rest of our advanced practice review, including our work to set standards.

A key part of the early adopters’ work is forming a community of practice, to share learning and support each other. Feedback from some has already been positive with one saying, “This is a great opportunity to lead the way, see how we’re aligned already and share with and learn from others – I’m really excited to be part of this.”

They’ll feed back to us over the next 12 months at regular intervals, through surveys and focus groups. The learning from this work will help demonstrate the impact and value of the principles; provide additional evidence for the remainder of our advanced practice review; and, through sharing of learning, help to influence and encourage others to implement the principles.

This is a great learning opportunity for us at the NMC and will provide rich data and information as we progress the advanced practice review.

Next steps

Whilst we’ve now reached capacity for the early adopters group, we’d encourage all organisations to promote and use the principles to ensure the best possible advanced practice care. We’ll be asking for feedback from all as our advanced practice review progresses.

To keep up to date please join our community of interest. You can also learn more by watching our webinars for employers and individual practitioners; listening to our conversations with key stakeholders highlighting the impact the principles will have; and reading last week’s blog about the impact the principles will have.

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