MSc Advanced Clinical Practice (Integrated degree apprenticeship for advanced clinical practitioner)

As an Advanced Clinical Practitioner, you will:

• Have a high level of autonomy (refers to Advanced Clinical Practitioners working to the full scope of their professional practice) and freedom to make decisions about how people should be cared for and treated and act in complex and unpredictable situations
• Use person-centred approaches to taking an individual’s detailed history and examine body systems to help you make a diagnosis
• Select, undertake or request a range of appropriate clinical tests and assessments to help you make a diagnosis
• Initiate and evaluate a range of interventions, which may include for example prescribing of medicines, therapies and care
• Apply a skillset that may have traditionally been the remit of other disciplines so that you can enhance the care and experience of individuals
• Analyse, interpret and act on the results of clinical tests and assessments and formulate a plan of care, which may include admission to a care setting such as a hospital, referral to settings for another opinion or discharge from services
• Drive service improvements, educate others and provide consultancy services within your scope of practice
• Undertake research activities to develop new knowledge and undertake audit to evaluate and further develop your area of expertise to improve care and services for the people you are treating.

Programme specifications provide definitive records of the university's taught degrees in line with Quality Assurance Agency requirements. Every taught course leading to a BU Award has a programme specification which describes its aims, structure, content and learning outcomes, plus the teaching, learning and assessment methods used.

Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the programme specification, the information is liable to change to take advantage of exciting new approaches to teaching and learning as well as developments in industry.

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Download the programme specification (PDF)

Core units

Advanced Practice: Contextual Issues and Professional Development:The Aim of this unit is to enable you to explore the contextual aspects surrounding the development of your advanced clinical practice role and provides an opportunity to analyse and debate recent developments relevant to clinical practice.

History Taking and Physical Examination for Advancing Practice:This unit advances your skills, knowledge and competence, to be able to proficiently conduct safe and effective, evidence-based, holistic patient assessments. You will develop knowledge and skills to enable you to competently elicit comprehensive patient histories through a structured consultation process and using high level therapeutic communication and consultation skills.

Assessment, Critical Reasoning and Decision Making for Advancing Practice:This unit will enable you to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to identify problems, formulate differential diagnoses and develop action plans, in respect of your own patient caseload within the clinical practice setting. It will develop your critical thinking, clinical and diagnostic reasoning and decision-making skills, aimed at meeting your patients’ health care needs and managing complex presentations and conditions. A prerequisite for undertaking this unit is successful completion of History Taking and Physical Examination for Advancing Practice.

Optional units

Independent and Supplementary Prescribing:This unit is to prepare you to prescribe safely, appropriately, and competently. In doing so you will be required to evaluate the evidence underlining the practice of prescribing, critically reflect on your competency in respect of prescribing and evidence knowledge of the products you will prescribe. For NMC or HCPC registrants who are permitted to be independent and supplementary prescribers.

OR
Supplementary Prescribing: To prepare you to prescribe safely, appropriately, and competently. In doing so you will be required to evaluate the evidence underlining the practice of prescribing, critically reflect on your competency in respect of prescribing and evidence knowledge of the products you will prescribe. For HCPC registrants who are permitted to be supplementary prescribers.

OR
Evidencing Professional Learning 1 and Evidencing Professional Learning 2: All health professionals are required to continuously engage in professional development with a feature of this being whether you are able to identify and meet learning needs and to apply the learning to practice. The professional development can be achieved either through work related courses or activities, attendance at conferences/masterclasses, courses outside the university, sessions within the university or self-study. 

Core units

Preparing for your Service Improvement Project: In this unit you will explore a range of relevant knowledge, skills, and attributes to enable the preparation of a Service Improvement Project (SIP).

Core units

Service Improvement Project (SIP): The project embraces both traditional and non-traditional forms of intellectual inquiry and relevant and effective practical management. It demonstrates your autonomous and independent ability, within a complex professional context, to create knowledge which expands or redefines existing knowledge and/or develops new approaches to service improvement. A prerequisite for undertaking this unit is successful completion of Preparing for your Service Improvement Project.

Empowering Leadership and Preparing for Advanced Clinical Practitioner End Point Assessment (across years 1 – 3 of study): This unit facilitates self-direction and personal responsibility for continuing professional development, with the aim for you to demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and behaviours of the advanced clinical practitioner apprenticeship standard (Institute of Apprenticeships, 2018, ST0564, updated 2022). Although not credit-bearing towards the MSc classification, passing this unit is required for you to progress through Gateway to the End Point Assessment.

Advanced Clinical Practitioner End Point Assessment Preparation:This unit includes the Advanced Clinical Practitioner End Point Assessment. The end point assessment is an independent assessment that takes place at the end of the degree-apprenticeship to ensure you are competent in your occupation. 

• You must have a contract of service with an employer which is long enough for you to complete the apprenticeship successfully (including, the end-point assessment). This is expected to be three years / typically 36 months.
• You must be employed in clinical practice for a minimum of 30 hours per week and be working to a job description that enables development in line with the occupational profile and apprenticeship standard of the Advanced Clinical Practitioner Apprenticeship.
• You must have support from your employer to work enough hours each week so that you can undertake sufficient regular off-the job training and on-the-job activity. This is to ensure you are likely to successfully complete the apprenticeship. You must keep evidence of the agreed average weekly hours, including time spent on off-the-job training. 
• University learning and supervised workplace learning should be structured to enable increasing independence and autonomy as an Advanced Clinical Practitioner, as the apprenticeship progresses. Your progress academically and in the workplace will be monitored at regular intervals prior to gateway progression.
• Your employer, in conjunction with your supervisor/assessor and the University, will confirm when you have met the criteria and are eligible to progress to the end point assessment. 
• You must have a suitable, named supervisor/assessor, in line with NHSE Centre for Advancing Practice expectations, agreed by your employer and University, who will support you in applying, reinforcing, and demonstrating the required knowledge, skills and behaviours within the workplace.
• Your employer must allow you to complete the apprenticeship within working hours. This includes off-the-job training requirement of 20% of your whole-time equivalent hours, as well as the stipulated on-the-job training.
   

• A Bachelors Honours degree with minimum 2:2 in any subject, or equivalent.
• You must have been registered with your respective statutory regulator of health and care professions (i.e. NMC, HCPC, GPhC), for a minimum of 3 years and provide proof of current registration.
• Level 2 English and Maths (i.e. GCSE grade C [‘4’ with new grading system] or above). If you do not hold this, you must complete this level prior to applying for the MSc Advanced Clinical Practice Apprenticeship. Other level 2 equivalent qualifications might be eligible in place of GCSE but must meet the acceptable qualifications for English and Maths requirements for apprenticeships defined by the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) at level 2 and above. 
• If English is not your first language, you will need to provide evidence that you can understand English to a satisfactory level. English language requirements for this course are normally IELTS (academic) 6.5 or above with minimum 6.0 in writing and 6.5 in speaking, listening, and reading. PSRB registration will normally be accepted as evidence for the English language requirement if the PSRB requirements were at or above the University requirements for postgraduate study.
• The University will uphold all requirements for independent assessment in the end point assessment as identified by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, which you need to complete within a maximum three-month period
• You cannot commence another DfE funded FE/HE programme at the same time as any apprenticeship.
• You cannot use a student loan to pay for an apprenticeship. Where an individual transfers to an apprenticeship from a full-time further education or higher education course, and that course has been funded by a student loan, the loan must be terminated by the individual and confirmed with the University.