Celebrating one year of the North West Faculty for Advancing Practice

It has been one year since the north west regional faculty was established with the team slowly growing over the last 12 months. The faculty have overcome the challenges of establishing a completely new team in a virtual world working remotely due to the pandemic.

The North West Faculty Core Team 

The faculty now consists of seven core team members, and nine training programme directors on a 12 month secondment post. The training programme directors are speciality advisors who are engaging with trainee advanced clinical practitioners and their supervisors to develop collaborative working with the faculty, strengthen feedback mechanisms and identify areas in which the faculty can support organisations and our higher education institutes to improve the training experience for advanced clinical practitioners. 

The priorities over the last year have been to understand and address the region’s workforce needs, provide regional leadership, commission high quality education and training, align commissioning with national standards, support education providers to gain centre accreditation and to explore the supervision needs for the advanced practice workforce. 

Progress has been made possible through the close collaboration with other HEE regional teams and their expertise, and our external stakeholders. Key achievements include:  

• Scoping of the advanced practice primary care workforce and the identification of training needs, to be able to support those eligible through an e-Portfolio route for recognition of advanced level practice 
• The delivery of a series of webinars to engage with multi-professional stakeholders  
• The development and implementation of a revised process to identify workforce demand for 2022-2023
• Establishment of a baseline of advanced practitioners across primary and secondary care 
• Accreditation of three HEI’s by the Centre for Advancing Practice with the remaining seven all working towards accreditation over the next 12-18 months
• The development of a north west HEI ACP network 
• Engagement and leadership at Integrated Care System level with the establishment of advanced clinical practitioner lead networks in two systems and a project lead to develop Cheshire and Merseyside. 

To build a recognised and visible advanced practitioner workforce is a priority for the NHS. There is a clear and identified need for highly experienced clinicians trained to an advanced level of practice. The faculty in collaboration with the Centre for Advancing Practice are driving pioneering workforce transformation for advanced practice across England.  

The vision of the north west regional faculty is, to create and enable transformative partnerships to develop, embed and sustain advanced practitioners across the north west region who are fit for 21st century care and that appropriate use is made of their skills and expertise across an evolving health and social care system.