The National Practitioner Programme (NPP) encompasses a range of projects that are focussing on the development and mainstreaming of practitioner roles. The programme is continuing and further developing work done by the Changing Workforce Programme’s practitioner trials. The Changing Workforce Programme (CWP) closed at the end of March 2005.
Practitioners are qualified professionals who, after training, can operate at a higher or broader level of responsibility and autonomy than previously. In order to do so, they must demonstrate they have the requisite education, experience and competence.
There are various levels of practitioner role. The NPP is focussing on Advanced/Senior Practitioners (level 6/7 of the Career Framework) and Assistant Practitioners (level 4).
NPP has developed a number of fact sheets that provide essential infromation on the development of these practitioner roles, please see the document library on this page.
This Collaboration Area has further information about the programme and its constituent projects, including practitioners in anaesthesia, critical care , emergency care , endoscopy, medical care and surgical care , as well as perioperative specialist practitioners .
The NPP will be the means of ensuring that these practitioner programmes stay linked together to share information, identify common needs, address common policy issues such as regulation, feed into the workforce number predictions and develop a communication strategy. This work will be led by Jackie Younger (based in North West London HA ) who is responsible for holding the ring and ensuring that the NPP Implementation Group moves forward. This work also needs to stay linked to other innovative work such as:
- the advanced nursing roles supported by the RCN, CNO and NMC
- advanced roles within other health professions
- continued work in midwifery, childrens’ services and mental health
- continued work on the NHS career framework
- excellent examples of local developments at HA and Trust level
Overall Aim of the Group
By necessity the various practitioner programmes have developed separately and each has it’s own steering group. Therefore, the aim of this group is to bring the various developments outlined above together and explore the practical issues required to ensure nationally, consistent & transferable approaches to implementation of practitioner roles at assistant, senior and advanced levels.
