Standards for specialist education and practice

The Standards for specialist education and practice were published in 2001.

These were standards for our approved programmes for specialist education and practice.

These standards no longer apply to public health nursing, health visiting, occupational health nursing and school nursing. Professionals who want to gain these qualifications must successfully complete NMC approved SCPHN programmes against the 2022 version.

The 2001 standards that apply to non-community SPQs (pages 9-11) were withdrawn on 31 August 2023. The remaining 2001 community focused SPQ standards were withdrawn on 31 August 2024.

This means we no longer approve qualification achieved against the 2001 SPQ standards, nor do they lead to an SPQ annotation on our register.

Annotations on the register will remain in place for people who already hold a non-community SPQ qualification against these standards.

Find out more about our new standards for post registration.