Overview
This Advanced Clinical Practitioner Apprenticeship (Degree) Level 7 course has been designed for experienced UK registered healthcare professionals*, with an advanced clinical focus to their role.
This course aims to develop your clinical skills and knowledge to an advanced level. This will empower you to practice with autonomy in your scope of practice and manage complexity in both decision-making and clinical presentations. During the course, you will be introduced to practice-focused skills and develop these into advanced diagnostic reasoning.
You will begin by gaining insight into your own educational needs and complete the course confident in your leadership and education of others.
You will:
- be introduced to critical use of evidence
- develop skills to apply this to your practice
- conclude with producing high-quality evidence that demonstrates the impact the ACP has on practice.
The course will therefore enable you to combine the four pillars of advanced clinical practice:
- expert clinical skills
- research
- education
- clinical leadership.
This multi-professional master’s level award has been designed to meet the National Degree Apprenticeship Standard and the Multi-professional Framework for Advanced Clinical Practice in England (NHS 2016).
*currently open to healthcare professionals registered with the NMC and physiotherapists and paramedics registered with the HCPC.
Find out more about the role of an Advanced Clinical Practitioner on the NHS website.
Location
You have the option of studying at our Reading or West London campus. Please select your preferred location below when applying. If you want to bring in recognition of prior learning may have to travel between the two campus sites due to having a modified curriculum.
Select a start date below to see relevant course information:
Start date:
Teaching & learning
We use a range of teaching techniques including:
Action learning sets
You will discuss real word clinical scenarios and your experience of and response to them with your peer group.
Knowledge acquisition is facilitated by lectures from expert clinicians, expert academics/researchers, master classes, service users and carers, learning form peers, problem based learning, and the 'flipped' classroom.
Interactive discussion
This will help you develop the skills of critical enquiry, synthesis and dissemination of key concepts within multi-professional contexts.
Innovative theatre techniques
These facilitate rehearsal and framing of leadership behaviours in a classroom environment.
Simulated learning
As a developing ACP you will be introduced to advanced clinical examination and reasoning skills. The patient presentations that you will be working with in practice will be complex. Simulation enables the re-creation of realistic practice situations, which will facilitate the application, development and rehearsal of your skills and knowledge for safe and effective patient care, at an advanced level.
This technique will enable you to develop originality in problem solving and develop the ability to act autonomously in planning and implementing treatment and care. It also facilitates the development of knowledge and skills to make systematic sound judgements and decisions in the absence of complete data and communicate your conclusions clearly to a specialist audience and patients/carers. .
The continued practice of clinical skills within simulated scenarios, offers you the opportunity to contextualise and apply your learning to the role of the ACP and provides an accelerated learning curve. Simulation also enables real-time debriefing and video analysis, which provides you with further opportunities for critical reflection and personal growth in this context. .
Learning from service users and carers
You will have opportunities to learn from service users and carers as part of your Degree Apprenticeship as well as from your peers alongside expert clinicians and researchers.
Critical reflection
You will be required to reflect critically on your own practice and learning.
Study mode
You must be a full time employee and will have a minimum of 20% ‘off the job’ learning. This will be achieved by:
- time spent at the University
- time spent in your workplace practising clinical skills
- time identified with the Employer, Apprentice and Apprentice Support Link Tutor evidenced through your individual learning plan.
How you will be assessed
Assessment and feedback are fundamental parts of your learning experience.
The requirements of the apprenticeship “gateway” must be completed before you are eligible to proceed to the 'End Point Assessment'.
Endpoint assessment
The end point assessment (EPA) must be completed in the last three months of the apprenticeship. This is the ‘Independence and Autonomy in Advanced Clinical Practice’ module. The requirements of the Gateway must be formally confirmed prior to undertaking the EPA.
A progression board will be held prior to the start of the third year of the course, which will formally confirm the requirements for the gateway are met, as displayed in the table below:
Gateway Criteria for the Integrated Degree Apprenticeship for Advanced Clinical Practitioner at Level 7
- Registered with the NMC/HCPC (as relevant) with proof of current registration and revalidation (NMC).
- 160 credits of the integrated Advanced Clinical Practitioner Apprenticeship (Degree) Level 7, have been successfully achieved.
- Confirmation from the employer that the requirements of the apprentice agreement and knowledge, skills and behaviours from the standard has been met within your workplace.
- Confirmation by the employer, UWL and you, of your readiness to progress to the EPA*
*(co-ordinated by the ALST and confirmed to the Course Leader)
N.B. GCSE English and Maths or equivalent, is part of the entry criteria, as such, you will meet this element of the gateway on entry.
Support for the achievement of the EPA will be integrated throughout the course. This has included our assessment strategy developing skills that will form part of the EPA (for example the OSCE; SCEP and Improvement Project). In addition, preparation will be part of the development of your portfolio, demonstrating your progression alongside specific examples of case exploration. This evidence will be presented and discussed as part of the 10 weekly tripartite review.
An independent assessor appointed by an Approved Assessment Organisation (AAO) will assess each element of the end point assessment and will then decide whether to award you with a pass, a merit or a distinction following the guidance of the relevant apprenticeship standard assessment plan.
As this is an integrated degree apprenticeship, the assessor will be employed by UWL, the Higher Education Institute responsible for delivery of the ACP apprenticeship. In line with guidance from the Education and Skills funding Agency (ASFA) the assessor must not have been involved at all in the course delivery.
Study & career progression
This Level 7 Apprenticeship will allow you to complete both the Apprenticeship and the Academic Award MSc Advanced Clinical Practice.
On successful completion of the apprenticeship you may wish to go on to study on one of our professional doctorate or PhD awards.
Contact us
Janet Rowson, Director of Apprenticeships
Please get in touch with Janet Rowson to find out more about working with the University of West London as a training provider.
- Email: janet.rowson@uwl.ac.uk