The Advanced Practice Toolkit is a dynamic resource that aims to:

• draw together existing and emerging work
• evovle as new information, policy and evidence becomes available
• promote a consistent systematic approach to the development of new roles
• support managers and practitioners in developing, maintaining and sustaining roles
• provide an outline of key elements that can be used to validate existing practitioner roles, thereby promoting benchmarking
• encourage consistency and avoid duplication by aligning Agenda for Change job profiles, job descriptions, Knowledge and Skills Framework outlines, agreed national competences, educational preparation and credit to the Career Framework for Health
• provide guidance on advanced practice education and development needs
• explore broader governance and regulation issues.

We've been engaging with key individuals and organisations from Scotland and across the UK in its development and are keen to build a strong consensus view.

The toolkit is targeted at three key audiences:

• Employers and service leads - to support consistent planning and decision-making regarding the development of such roles, where they may already exist and where they may need to be developed.
• Education providers - to provide a focus for the development, provision and dissemination of programmes of educational development which meet the key elements of this role and match closely with the expectations and requirements of employers, commissioners and practitioners themselves.
• Senior or Advanced level Practitioners - to provide guidance and tools that allow practitioners to measure their own development, capabilities and role expectations against the benchmark for this role.

We are very keen to build the toolkit into a repository of high quality resources and we would encourage stakeholders from all the above groups to use the  Resources Upload form on the Home Page to submit materials to this toolkit, or use the contact details to submit queries or requests for additional tools to be developed.