If you’d like to be kept up to date with our progress, and be notified of any opportunities to get involved, please sign up to our community of interest here.
Experienced nurses and midwives across the UK are increasingly taking on complex, autonomous and expert roles commonly referred to as ‘advanced practice’.
Nurses and midwives taking on these roles has huge benefits for the people in their care. Their advanced knowledge and skill enable them to demonstrate advanced communication skills, make timely person-centred decisions, provide continuity of care and support people to navigate their care pathway seamlessly across different specialities, settings and professions.
Advanced nursing and midwifery practitioners enhance capacity for service transformation and delivery, help other health and care professionals to re-prioritise and improve the overall safety and quality of service. The role provides pathways for career progression facilitating workforce development and retention.
All nurses and midwives on the register are regulated professionals who abide by the Code and standards, and revalidate every three years in line with their scope of practice, knowledge and competence, including professionals in advanced practice roles. Over the years there have been calls for more additional specific regulation of nursing and midwifery professionals in advanced practice roles.
We committed to carrying out a comprehensive review of advanced nursing and midwifery practice, including consideration of whether additional regulation is needed, as part of our 2020-25 corporate strategy.
Our evidence review, commissioned research, and engagement, with thousands of professionals and members of the public, has found that while advanced practitioners play an important role in the health and care system, a lack of consistency in education and training, qualifications, responsibilities and governance processes can create a risk to the public that additional regulation can help mitigate.
We’ve therefore decided to explore a combination of approaches to the regulation of advanced practice.
Advanced Practice Conversations
This video shows highlights of three conversations explaining the benefits of advanced practice for people receiving care and how we've involved the public in our review. See Advanced practice conversations to watch the conversations in full.
