Advanced Clinical Practice (GP)

Clinical Episode Management in Primary Care

This module explores and identifies specialist primary care knowledge to support the clinical diagnosis and management of common conditions managed on a regular basis in primary care. The student will consolidate their skills in history taking and clinical examination to enable clinical diagnosis and relevant management plans. The knowledge and skills relating to different assessment foci will be explored so that patient management and advanced clinical reasoning can be fostered alongside developing justification for differential diagnoses, investigations and treatments.

This unit enables the practitioner to develop a portfolio of evidence of advanced practice competence in relation to common clinical management episodes.

15 credits

Advanced Clinical Assessment

Advanced clinical skill development is a key feature of the advanced clinical practitioner role and the completion of this module will provide advanced general practice clinical practitioner students with the relevant underpinning anatomy, physiology and pathophysiology knowledge to gain mastery in their role. The knowledge and expertise gained on this module will facilitate mastery and autonomy in comprehensive history taking, assessment, diagnosis and therapeutic management of their clients with a focus on the adult population. The knowledge and skills related to patient-centred diagnosis and management will foster advanced clinical reasoning alongside developing justification for differential diagnoses, investigations and treatments.

30 credits

Evidence Based Practice (Online)

This unit is designed to enable the student to consider sources of knowledge that impact on the development of health and social care practices. The nature of evidence and the skills of searching, retrieval, appraisal, utilisation, dissemination and implementation of evidence will be conceded in the light of health and social care service efficacy. A variety of teaching and learning strategies will be offered to facilitate the development of the knowledge and skills required for evaluation of evidence in practice, culminating in the development of a defensible proposal to support practice/service enhancement.

15 credits

Core modules:

Clinical Leadership

Healthcare professionals strive to provide care that is continuously improving, high quality, safe and compassionate. Such care needs to be adaptive to local and national organisational strategies, learns from incidents and is aligned to patient opinions, behaviours and service demand. Effective leadership behaviours are central to high quality clinical care, and focused on a patient safety culture that can transcend professional and organisational boundaries to drive quality improvements.

Within this module, we will critically explore and analyse the theories and evidence underpinning practice improvement, human factors, service redesign and transformational leadership, ensuring the student has the creative ability to propose and develop a practice-based report and use innovative approaches to disseminate their findings.

15 credits

Managing Complexity in Primary Care

This module explores and identifies specialist primary care knowledge of both children and adults to support the clinical diagnosis and management of complex clinical presentations in practice. The student will augment their advanced clinical skills of history taking, clinical examination and reasoning to further develop their diagnostic skills and  autonomy when prescribing and managing complexity within their everyday clinical practice. This typically will require ongoing holistic person-centred care incorporating greater prevention and health promotion with particular attention to vulnerability.

The knowledge and skills related to differential diagnosis and diagnostic uncertainty will be explored so that client management and clinical reasoning can advance. 

By the end of the module the student will be able to review and synthesise data in complex clinical situations to demonstrate and communicate their advanced clinical practice capability and competency.

15 credits

Independent & Supplementary Prescribing for Nurses and Midwives

This module will enable qualified nurses and midwives to critically evaluate the principles underpinning nurse prescribing, including exploring the pharmacology of drugs and to examine the issues faced when prescribing in clinical practice as part of an interdisciplinary team. This will allow them to prescribe safely, appropriately, and cost effectively. Students are required to undertake supervised clinical practice under the mentorship of a designated prescribing practitioner. Successful completion of the module will in fulfil the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) criteria to allow annotation in the professional register as an independent/supplementary prescriber.

Applicants must be a registered nurse (level 1), a registered midwife or a SCPHN (registered with the NMC) before being considered as eligible to apply for entry onto an NMC approved prescribing programme

Applicants for V300 supplementary/independent prescribing programmes must have been registered with the NMC for a minimum of one year prior to application for entry onto the programme (change to NMC requirements 2018)

Applicants will also need to evidence that they have the necessary skills in clinical and health assessment, diagnostics, care management and the planning and evaluation of care

For level 7 applications It is expected that participants have 120 credits at level 6 (degree) or demonstrate the ability to study at this level.

All Registrants must have an up-to date Disclosure and Barring Service check i.e. within last three years, before they commence educational preparation to prescribe as a Nurse Independent Prescriber. This includes applicants who are self-employed or work in non NHS settings.

30 credits

Effective advanced practice for independent prescribers

This unit is designed for those already with a prescribing qualification at undergraduate level who are training for advanced practice roles, which bring greater demands for autonomy and critical thinking. It aims to develop the knowledge and skills to fully integrate their prescribing practice into their new advanced role. The unit builds on the knowledge and skills already gained through completion of a previous course in independent prescribing and uses principles of reflective practice and work based learning to further develop effectiveness in relation to advanced practice.

30 credits

Critical review of clinical practice

Senior health and social care professionals need to be able to translate and apply learning from academic programmes in order to make a meaningful contribution to practice. The unit will enable students to complete a substantial piece of work that has the potential to stimulate development or innovation in their practice. It draws together learning from the programme and engages the academic skills of critical appraisal with development of a proposal of application to practice. Students identify a relevant issue and subject this to systematic analysis to produce an evidence based report which addresses improvement objectives through deliverable recommendations.

60 credits