Regulation of advanced nursing practice

The Report of the Prime Minister’s Commission recommends:

“The Nursing and Midwifery Council must regulate advanced nursing practice, ensuring that advanced practitioners are recorded as such on the register and have the required competencies. Stakeholders must also consider how to reduce and standardize the proliferation of roles and job titles in nursing. The Midwifery 2020 programme should consider whether midwives working in specialist and consultant roles need advanced level regulation.”

Background
Advanced nursing practise is an umbrella term which is used to describe a number of specialist roles including clinical nurse specialist and nurse practitioner.

In June 2005, the NMC’s governing Council considered the outcome of its consultation on a post-registration nursing framework.  As a result, it agreed that the level of practice should be called advanced nursing practice and that this level of practice should be registered.

The next step was to seek approval from the Privy Council to open a further sub-part of the nurses’ part of the register in order to register advanced nurse practitioners. A letter was sent to the Privy Council in December with additional information being sent in January 2006. 

There followed a period of very little movement until in February 2007, the Government set out its proposals for the reform of professional regulation in the White Paper, ‘Trust, Assurance and Safety – the Regulation of Health Professionals in the 21st Century’.

The White Paper stated that ‘where appropriate, common standards and systems should be developed across professional groups where this would benefit patient safety. This will encompass the development of standards for higher levels of practice, particularly for advanced practice in nursing, AHPs and healthcare scientists. 

The Department will discuss with the Nursing and Midwifery Council the outcome of their consultation on advanced nursing practice to agree next steps (2.30)’.

Next steps
The NMC will be establishing a project group to examine the basic competencies required of someone practising at an advanced level in order to protect the public. 

The group will be seeking to learn the views of stakeholders and the lessons from how other countries, such as Australia and the USA, already regulate advanced nursing practice. The group will also be giving consideration to how such a model would be appropriate for midwifery.