Introducing our new faculty team member: Jason Mistry
Hello, my name is Jason Mistry, and I am the Clinical Leadership & Education Manager within the Midlands Advancing Practice Faculty. I have been in the team since July 2025 but have worked for NHS England since 2016, initially in the Midlands Quality and Commissioning team. I joined the Faculty from the Centre for Advancing Practice where I worked since 2020. I’m looking forward to working with you all and supporting the work of Advancing Practice within the Midlands.
Coming Soon – National Education and Training Survey: NETS 2025
NHS England’s Workforce Training and Education directorate conduct the National Education and Training Survey (NETS) each year. This offers a platform for healthcare learners and trainees to share their experiences and shape the future of healthcare education.
Since 2019, NETS is the only national survey open to all healthcare students, trainees, and apprentices. NETS provides us with essential feedback on induction, clinical supervision, facilities, learning opportunities, and teamwork they experience. It also includes questions on health and wellbeing, equality, diversity, and inclusion.
Share your experience and shape your future by taking ten minutes to complete the survey between 7 October – 2 December 2025.
Centre for Advancing Practice Masterclass Series
Join us for an inspiring masterclass series hosted by the Centre for Advancing Practice. These are designed to support the continued growth and excellence of the advanced and consultant practice workforce. This series brings together national leaders and subject matter experts to explore the latest developments in policy, practice, and professional development.
You can read full details on the dedicated Masterclass Series webpage.
Information on some upcoming webinars are below.
Unlocking Potential: The ePortfolio (Supported) Route Explained
14 October 12:30 to 13:30
This masterclass offers a comprehensive introduction to the ePortfolio (Supported) Route—a vital pathway for recognising advanced practitioners who completed their education outside of an accredited programme. Designed to uphold national standards while valuing diverse professional journeys, this route enables experienced practitioners to demonstrate their training, education, and impact through a structured, supported process.
Attendees will gain insight into the purpose and design of the route, the support mechanisms in place, and the positive impact it’s having on individuals, services, and systems. Whether you’re considering the route yourself, supporting a colleague, or leading workforce development, this session will clarify the benefits and opportunities of this important recognition pathway.
Consultant Practice Unpacked: Progress, Purpose, and Possibilities
14 December, time: TBC
This masterclass explores the evolving landscape of Consultant Practice across the NHS. Join us for a timely update on current developments, emerging expectations, and the strategic direction shaping this advanced level of practice. Through insights from national workstreams and real-world examples, this session will unpack what’s happening now—and what’s on the horizon—for Consultant-level practitioners.
Registration opening soon.
Birmingham City University – Student Showcase Event Spring 2025
Written by: Sharon Bishop, Course Lead for the MSc Advanced Clinical Practice and MSc Advanced Clinical Practice (degree apprenticeship)
Introduction
As part of the MSc Advanced Clinical Practice/ MSc Advanced Clinical Practice (degree apprenticeship) programme, students in Year 3 undertake a service improvement project. As part of the module assessment, we host an annual Showcase event.
Background
In their final year, all students must define, plan, implement, analyse and evaluate a service progression and improvement project. This allows them to bring about an organisational change in response to policy/practice drivers. This 9- month long module aligns to capabilities across all four pillars of the HEE (2017) Multiprofessional framework for advanced clinical practice in England*. It also reflects a range of knowledge, skills and behaviours within the Advanced Clinical Practitioner apprenticeship standard (Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, 2018).
The main element of assessment for the module is a substantive piece of coursework which presents their project in detail.
In addition, an in-person assessment takes place in the format of a Showcase Event. This provides an opportunity for the students to showcase their service improvement projects.
The Showcase event
Natalie Ruscoe, Regional Faculty Lead for Advancing Practice, delivered a keynote speech which underlined the essential nature of advanced level roles in the healthcare workforce. Following this, we encourage guests to move around the room to discuss the projects with students, creating an environment of collaborative sharing of best practice and innovation. Guests included, clinical supervisors, employers, Year 2 Advanced Clinical Practice students, and BCU colleagues.
During the event, we celebrated a range of service improvement projects:
- Increasing cervical screening attendance through community outreach
- Development of a single MSK injury management guideline for Minor Injury Units
- Improving the referral process from nursing homes to Urgent Community Response team
- The introduction of a nurse led lower limb venous ulcer clinic
- Improving best practice with meeting the National Emergency Laparotomy Audit (NELA) standards
- Enhancing patient safety through improving awareness and compliance with Deteriorating Patient Pathway out of hours
- Improving frailty awareness and assessment in care homes, to reduce unnecessary hospitalisation.
Feedback from visitors was very positive:
Amazing!!”
“I could see the passion in people who were presenting and really wanted to make a difference”
“Fantastic projects and student presentations”
Thoughts from the day – by the Regional Faculty
Attending the showcase event was wonderful. The event met the academic requirements of the programme. We clearly saw that the projects focused on improving patient services and pathway. In addition, where possible they considered financial implications where possible. It was also great to see the impact that these projects would and were having. Thanks for inviting us and congratulations to these students!
*Event took place prior to the refresh of the NHS England (2025) Multi-professional framework for advanced practice in England
Implementation and evaluation of the advanced practice research toolkit
Written by: Professor Kerry Gaskin, Birmingham City University
Introduction
There is growing emphasis on the importance of the research pillar for advanced level practice. This is supported by the publication of the national research strategies for nursing, midwifery and allied health professionals (NHSE 2021,2022,2024), the multiprofessional practice-based research capabilities framework (NHSE 2024) and the updated multiprofessional framework for advanced practice (NHSE 2025). However, whilst there is some evidence emerging about nurse practitioners’ views and experiences of research activities in Ireland and Australia (Ryder et al 2019, 2020, 2022), little research evidence exists regarding the research pillar or the research culture, capacity and capability of advanced practitioners in the United Kingdom.
Although nurse practitioners perceive research to be important to their role (Ryder et al 2019), research is deemed to be a less well-established pillar for advanced practitioners with many lacking confidence in this pillar (Fielding et al 2022). Non-clinical development, including research, education and leadership, is considered a pressing issue faced by advanced practitioners. This is exacerbated by the lack of non-clinical time in the job plan (Brooks & Richards 2025; Fothergill et al 2022).
The advanced practice research toolkit
The advanced practice research toolkit (APRT) was developed to support advanced practitioners in one NHS Foundation Trust to get started with the research pillar, to consider their research priorities, set individual and team goals and aid appraisal discussions (Gaskin 2023).
Funding from NIHR Wessex Applied Research Collaboration and research nurse support from the West Midlands NIHR Regional Research Delivery Unit, enabled implementation of a mixed methods service development project in October 2024. Ten pilot sites across England are participating. These include the Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital Trust, Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care Trust and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (Gaskin, Hoverd & Finney 2025). The pre-implementation phase (October-December 2024) surveyed advanced practitioners, line managers and supervisors to ascertain their views about research culture, capacity and capability.
The results indicated that the top motivators for advanced practitioners to engage in research were that the research pillar had been written into their role description, job satisfaction and to develop research capability. The top three barriers to engaging in research were other work roles taking priority, lack of time for research or not being in the job plan and joint third lack of skills for research and no system in place to set objectives. The full results will be published elsewhere. The implementation phase started in January 2025, with the APRT being implemented using a variety of mechanisms across each of the ten pilot organisations. Advanced practitioners, line managers and supervisors are being encouraged to use the toolkit to set objectives and plan research activity to meet the research pillar capabilities (NHSE 2024, 2025).
The implementation will be evaluated during September and October 2025. This will involve gathering individual and organisational case studies and inviting project leads, advanced practitioners, line managers and supervisors to complete the post-implementation survey.
What some of our pilot sites had to say:
“University Hospitals Birmingham has a large advanced clinical practitioner workforce practising in different specialties and areas. The APRT is flexible and can be used by individuals and teams. Implementing the toolkit has helped improve communication and teamwork among advanced clinical practitioners and the research and development department. As a result, advanced clinical practitioners have better access to training and opportunities in clinical research. Their skills are also being used to share knowledge across the trust.
“Being involved in the implementation and evaluation project has been a game-changer at HWHCT. Our Advanced Practitioners are not only engaging with the Toolkit from an academic perspective, but they are also actively seeking out opportunities to gain practical research experience. This includes exploring ways to showcase their Quality Improvement and Service Evaluation projects.
Accessing the advanced practice research toolkit
The APRT is now available via the Centre for Advancing Practice catalogue in its ‘Research’ folder in the NHS Learning Hub. Access to the NHS Learning Hub requires registration, either as a ‘full user’ for those registering with a NHS email address, or as a ‘general account’ for those registering with other email addresses.
The toolkit is freely available with a Creative Commons Attribution licence international version 4, which gives recipients maximum freedom to do what they want with the work of the licensor (Creative Commons, 2013). Recipients redistributing the work must give credit to the original author of the work (=attribution) and state changes if any, including a URL or link to the original work, CC-BY licence and a copyright notice.
If you are interested in finding out more about the APRT, contact Kerry @GaskinKerry @APResToolkit, Kerry.gaskin2@bcu.ac.uk
Acknowledgement
This study is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research ARC Wessex. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the National Institute for Health and Care Research or the Department of Health and Social Care.
References
Brooks E, Richards H (2025) Enhancing advanced clinical practitioners’ non-clinical skills, British Journal of Nursing, 2025, 34 (4): 208-212. https://doi.org/10.12968/bjon.2024.0338
Creative Commons. Attribution 4.0 International legal code. 2013. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
Fothergill LJ, Al-Oraibi A, Houdmont J, Conway J, Evans C, Timmons S, Pearce R, Blake H. (2022) Nationwide evaluation of the advanced clinical practitioner role in England: a cross-sectional survey. BMJ Open.12(1):e055475. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-055475
Gaskin K (2023) Achieving the research pillar: a research toolkit for Advanced Practitioners, Evidence Based Nursing, available at: https://blogs.bmj.com/ebn/2023/06/11/achieving-the-research-pillar-a-research-toolkit-for-advanced-practitioners/
Gaskin K, Hoverd E, Finney A. (2025) Getting started with the research pillar of UK advanced practice. Nurse Researcher 33 (2): 6-7, available at: https://journals.rcni.com/nurse-researcher/commentary/how-to-start-the-research-pillar-in-advanced-practice-nr.33.2.6.s2/abs
Ryder, M., Jacob, E., & Hendricks, J. (2019). An inductive qualitative approach to explore Nurse Practitioners views on leadership and research: An international perspective. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 28(13–14), 2644–2658. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.14853
Ryder, M., Jacob, E., & Hendricks, J. (2020). A survey identifying leadership and research activities among Nurse Practitioners. Contemporary Nurse: A Journal for the Australian Nursing Profession, 56(5–6), 441– 454. https://doi.org/10.1080/10376178.2020.1835508
Ryder, M., & Jacob, E. (2022). A translational research framework for nurse practitioners. Journal of Nursing Management, 30(2), 421–427. https://doi. org/10.1111/jonm.13496