Exercises to work out the advanced practice demands in a specified practice setting.
Exercise 1
- Make a list of about 15 patients you have seen as a team. You might just pick the last 15. You should be satisfied there is a mix of complexity of clinical needs. Ones who are more ‘usual’ and ones who are more complex.
- Put the names of the patients on individual cards – turn them over so that you cannot see the names.
- Pick three of the cards at random. Turn them over and in different combinations, discuss how two of them are similar but different from the third. The similarities and differences might be clinical, social, emotional, cultural, operational (discharge planning, ordering equipment) and so on. Think about all the ways in which the team support the individuals with their health condition(s) and the impact for those individuals.
- Capture all your ideas in a list (a list of the practice demands in your setting). You can then use the list to think about the competences and capabilities that are required to meet those practice demands. Which of those are required at an advanced level and who is best placed to supervise the advanced clinical practitioner for each aspect of practice.
Exercise 2
In exercise 1 all those taking part in the activity ideally need to be familiar with all the patients. In some settings this might be more difficult. For example in primary care, community settings or where there is high patient turnover as in emergency care. This second exercise may work better in those settings. It is essentially the same as exercise 1. Instead of using patients, gather a large collection of postcards or use a free picture resource e.g. Unsplash.
- Spread out the cards and get colleagues to select a few cards that ‘represent’/’remind them of’ patients they have seen. You might encourage colleagues to pick a card that represents a straightforward clinical encounter and one that represents a more challenging encounter.
- Get colleagues to write down all the practice demands associated with that encounter; clinical, social, emotional, cultural, operational (discharge planning, ordering equipment) and so on. Think about all the ways in which the team/practitioner supports the individuals with their health condition(s) and the impact for those individuals.
- Capture all your ideas in a list (a list of the practice demands in your setting). You can then use the list to think about the competences and capabilities that are required to meet those practice demands, which of those are required at an advanced level and who is best placed to supervise the advanced clinical practitioner for each aspect of practice.
