Advanced practice

Advanced practice

As the delivery of healthcare evolves, increasingly some professionals are taking on responsibilities not traditionally associated with their professions. The development of such roles could potentially pose a risk to public protection if initial qualifications for entry to the register and experience through their career alone do not adequately prepare a professional for undertaking these roles without additional qualifications.

The Department of Health asked us to provide advice on:

• The current approaches of the regulators to ‘advanced’, ‘specialist’ and ‘expanded’ practice.
• Any additional risks to the safety of patients from these roles, and the contribution of post-registration qualifications and defined scopes of practice to ensuring patient safety.
• The appropriate roles of regulators and employers respectively in identifying and controlling for any additional risks, and whether there are any wider regulatory implications from these roles.

We have now completed our final report.

We concluded that regulatory bodies need to consider the risks to patients and other members of the public from the roles and responsibilities professionals are taking on in the context of other established governance arrangements.

If an area of practice does develop within a profession which poses different types of risk to patients and requires new standards of proficiency to be performed safely, regulatory bodies need to ensure their processes capture this.

Only the relevant regulatory body, in consultation with professionals, employers and other interested parties, has the competence to determine whether action is needed regarding these specific practitioners. However, action should not be taken which serves to denote their career progress or professional status.

For a quick summary of this project, read the summary paper.