Deep dive into the East of England (EoE) Faculty

The regional team or East of England Regional Faculty was established in January 2021. Since then, we have established Advanced Practice ICS meetings in each of the six systems. The aim is to provide oversight and strategic vision for workforce development, training, and to develop governance of the advancing roles in a consistent way.

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Workforce planning, modelling, and intelligence

Our initial focus has been on increasing the understanding of the advance practice roles across the systems, building relationships to support meaningful dialogue and scoping exercises to move the workforce planning agenda forward.

We have started to undertake scoping of the current advanced practice workforce across primary and secondary care. Initial returns and ESR data would indicate that we have >1573 APs within the EoE:

• 952 in secondary care, 226 of which are AHPs
• 621 in primary care (whose data is still being analysed).

We will continue to work with the regional business intelligence teams and organisations to ensure ESR guidance is updated appropriately and is embedded across the ICSs to provide more accurate future reporting, (HEE 2019 National AP survey identified 191 APs within the EoE).

Workforce growth / education commissioning

The Advancing Practice Faculties ACP transitional commissioning proposal was approved: From academic year 2021 / 22 onwards the EoE Faculty have been approved to provide £6,000 p.a, per practitioner to undertake a full MSc in Advanced Practice, £2,600 of which will need to go toward high-quality supervision.

The Advanced Practice Faculties Advanced Critical Care Practitioners two-year commissioning plan was approved: Covid highlighted the workforce shortages within intensive care units across the EoE and the development of trainee ACCP post within the region has always been limited due to the financial commitments required from organisations. The two-year commissioning plan provides financial support for tuition fees, supervision and 50% salary support to enable practitioners to be supernumerary in line with FICM requirements. The organisations have agreed to match the salary support, and we now have 29 trainee ACCP due to start training within the next two years. Increasing our ACCPs from 13 across 4 departments to 42 across 17 departments. 

Quality and education provisions

Positive engagement has taken place with all HEIs within the region, the faculty is helping to review current ACP programme provisions and ensuring they map against the multi-professional framework for advancing practice, with the aim of all ACP programmes within the region to be accredited by the Centre of Advancing Practice within the next two years.

Initial review of ACP programme provisions within the region has highlighted that further development is required specifically for the midwifery, neonatal, ophthalmology and the mental health AP workforce. Discussions are starting to take place with the stakeholders develop the relevant MSc modules.

Anglian Ruskin University have developed an ACCP programme which is currently going through external validation, first cohort is planned for September 2021.  

AP supervision

• Current work being undertaken to ensure that the EoE tiered system for educator’s supervision training encompasses APs and the wider workforce.
• Regional supervision guidelines are in development to clearly state the training required for any practitioners supervising APs.
• Development of a supervision module specifically for AP supervisors underway to aid quality and consistency across the region.
• In discussions with HEIs regarding imbedding supervision training as part of a core module within any ACP programme pathway.

Innovation and modernisation

The faculty is currently in the process of undertaking a pilot to evaluate the effect of medical trainee APs having access to the learning material on Panopto / Bridge, and to evaluate the impact the resource has on their knowledge and skills and overall training experience.

If the pilot is successful, then a business case will be developed to provide access for all trainee APs and support the develop of any additional training material identified. Longer term goal will be for all APs to have access to support lifelong CPD. 

Stakeholder engagement and communications

• The established AP ICS meetings enable us to facilitate engagement across the region. To support these meetings, we have developed an AP ICS SharePoint to facilitate the development of appropriate workstreams, effective communication between ICS’s and the ability to share best practice.
• Regional mental health, maternity and primary care webinars have been organised for August and September.
• Regional webpage has been developed.
• Cambridge and Peterborough AP conference in development for September 2021.
• Faculty ‘Open mornings’ have been organised to enable aspiring, training and current APs, supervisors, managers and organisations time to talk directly with the AP faculty.
• Regional mail base has been established to disseminate regional and national updates.

Faculty of Advancing Practice East of England email address: EoEapfaculty@hee.nhs.uk

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