Interesting developments within Scotland has seen a commitment from the Scottish Government CNO office to support the development of 500 Advanced Nurse Practitioners (ANPs). The report from the working group has set out a robust vision for ANPs education, key competencies and an agreement that MSc qualification will be the minimum to be considered an ANP. Governance structures within health boards will require collating numbers of existing ANPs and specialty (this is already done in some health boards) and standard job descriptions. Many of the recommendations are already being achieved and HEIs are covering the majority (if not all) of the core areas of education in their existing MSc programmes.

Clinical assessment

Clinical reasoning, judgement and diagnostic decision making

Anatomy and pathophysiology

Non medical prescribing- V300

Leading, delivering and evaluating care

Practice learning/transferable work based learning processes.

This pragmatic approach to ANP education focussing on the clinical pillar of advanced practice reflects the current service needs of the country. However, the report does stress the importance of all 4 pillars of AP.  How HEIs ensure that they are able to accommodate these increased numbers and how a standard approach on clinical pathways of MSc programmes is met is something that we at AAPE UK are aiming to address via our AAPE Scottish sub- group which should be discussing these developments with the working group. Interestingly, the focus here is on nursing whilst the rest of the UK appears to focusing on AP across disciplines. However, these are exciting times which could see the most coordinated approach to ANP education across the whole of Scotland. I recommend reading the whole report. transforming-roles-advanced-practice-paper-june-2016

Dr Evelyn McElhinney (UK Committee, AAPE Scotland sub-group lead)