Enhanced Clinical Practitioner

Entry requirements

Prospective students will be required to have:

• Hold an existing professionally regulated qualification e.g., NMC/HCPC, permitted to undertake the Enhanced Clinical Practitioner role
• A lower second-class honours degree (2:2) in a health-related subject or equivalent qualification
• Support from your employer to undertake the course or individual standalone modules
• Completed declaration from you and your employer of satisfactory DBS

Students whose first language is not English will be expected to have reached a sufficient standard on admission to the programme (e.g. IELTS 7, with a minimum of 5.5 in each element, or equivalent).

Months of entry

September

Course content

The PGCert Enhanced Clinical Practitioner course is designed to support you as an experienced health and care practitioner to develop skills in complex reasoning, critical thinking, and analysis. It will support you to begin a career as an Enhanced Clinical Practitioner, allowing you to further develop specific knowledge and skills in your field of expertise.

The programme is multi-professional and aimed at registrants who aspire to work at an enhanced level of practice, independently and autonomously within multidisciplinary teams within a wide range of settings, including hospitals, community clinics, individual’s homes and in dental and general practices.

Key features

• A highly blended learning approach combining on campus and work-based learning opportunities to build on existing knowledge and expertise to independently undertake holistic clinical assessments.
• Online learning and independent study accessed through virtual learning platforms, to develop the required knowledge and skills for enhanced practice including pathophysiology, clinical reasoning, leadership, change and education.
• Develop the skills to independently plan, deliver, monitor and evaluate complex care
• Use your workplace to focus on an area of interest and design a learning project to promote innovative, evidence-based, complex care
• An opportunity to learn alongside other professional groups and develop expertise within the multidisciplinary team.

Teaching

You are taught through a blended combination of online lecturers and interactive workshops and seminars, complemented by opportunity to complete enhanced clinical skills on campus, in our skills and simulation suites. Interactive workshops take a variety of formats and are intended to enable the application of learning through discussion and small group activities. Seminars enable the discussion and development of understanding of topics covered in lectures. You will also complete a range of online directed activities to support both online and on campus delivery.

In addition, meetings with personal academic tutors are scheduled on at least four occasions across the course.

The University places emphasis on enabling students to develop the independent learning capabilities that will equip you for lifelong learning and future employment, as well as academic achievement. A mixture of independent study, teaching and academic support from Student Services and Library Services, and also the personal academic tutoring system enables you to reflect on progress and build up a profile of skills, achievements and experiences that will help you to flourish and be successful.

Your workplace will further support and enhance your learning and you will be supported to apply your learning to your current employed role.

Careers

Students studying the PG Cert Enhanced Clinical Practitioner course, will already be experienced registered health or care professionals working in a health and care setting. Enhanced practice occurs in multiple settings including secondary, community, primary and social care.

The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan (2023) highlights the future will see more health and care staff in enhanced roles. There are a wide variety of job titles for these roles, but they focus on staff who undertake complex work and manage day to day risk, including risks on behalf of, or with people.