This Advanced Practice Week, 12-18 November, NHS Lanarkshire’s Advanced Practitioners are taking to social media to highlight what they love about their role and how they ensure patients are receiving the right care in the right place at the right time this winter and infact all year round.
Advanced Practitioners (APs) work across primary care delivering on the day clinical expertise via GP practices or within Out Of Hours. Dealing with urgent presentations ranging from chest symptoms, winter coughs, UTIs, headaches, tonsillitis and sore throats to the exacerbation of chronic conditions, APs deliver a highly skilled level of care with expert knowledge.
To achieve the competencies required, trainee APs are released from their clinical roles one day per week to undertake modules at Glasgow Caledonian University including clinical assessment and prescribing, which builds towards their Post Graduate Diploma in Advanced Practice over 2 years.
Megan is one of our first year trainee APs currently working within a GP Practice seeing acute on the day illnesses supported by her GP supervisor. She receives support from fully qualified APs and senior APs in addition to the Doctors she works beside.
Second year trainee AP Gordon stated, “I really enjoy the variety of the role, primarily acute but also chronic illness, and making sure we keep our patients safe.” Gordon has almost completed his programme of study and will soon be a qualified Advanced Practitioner.
Steph is a newly qualified AP and now that she’s completed her Post Graduate Diploma she’s working towards her MSc qualification at university. She says, “The best part of the role for me is being an autonomous practitioner within the primary care setting, caring for patients from age 4 up to end of life.” Steph delivers care via telephone triage, face to face and home visits, managing patients within primary care and escalating to secondary care when required.
