Overview
This section provides an overview of the work being taken forward to support advanced nursing practice within NHS Scotland.
Advanced practice roles have been developing globally for over two decades. In the UK, roles have tended to develop opportunistically and in an inconsistent manner. The toolkit concept was therefore concieved tosupport consistency and benchmarking of advanced practice roles. The Advanced Nursing Practice Toolkit was originally developed under the UK-wide Modernising Nursing Careers (MNC) initiative (Scottish Executive, et al, 2006) and builds upon earlier Scottish work, in particular the Framework for Developing Nursing Roles (Scottish Executive, 2005) and the draft Framework for Advanced and Specialist Cancer Nursing (2006).
To view the Framework full screen, click on the image below.
Fig. 1 Framework for Developing New Nursing Roles (Scottish Executive, 2005)
Scotland continues to take forward the MNC workstreams under the 'umbrella' of Curam (Scotland Cares) (Scottish Government, 2008), which spells out the nursing, midwifery and allied health professions' (NMAHP) contribution to the delivery of high-quality care in Scotland.
While MNC is, by definition, focused on nursing, we are keen to ensure that this initiative reflects frameworks and processes that can be applied across the NMAHP professions, where possible. While we draw mainly on examples from nursing, the principals have been used by allied health professionals and we would like to encourage service leads and colleagues in midwifery and the allied health professions to consider how they coudl be applied more broadly to health care careers.
The establishment and endorsement of the Advanced Nursing Practice Toolkit across the 4 UK countries is a key development under the auspicies of MNC. Following the completion of the MNC initiative, four country engagement continues on this and other issues to identify areas of consensus and opportunities for future shared and collaborative working.
The site map on the Home Page will help you find specific elements within the toolkit and you can find the entire original toolkit document (Supporting the Developing of Advanced Nursing Practice) in the resources section.
