MSc Advanced Clinical Practitioner (Apprenticeship)

After choosing your route, you'll develop advanced skills in communication, clinical assessment, and examination. You’ll also build confidence in clinical decision‑making and management within your area of practice.

The module helps you develop the ability to critically analyse and review care decisions. You'll do this by discussing, debating, and comparing different approaches to care delivery.

You'll agree a range of locally negotiated competency areas to support your progression towards advanced practice. These may be specific to your role or profession.

You'll then examine a complex case from practice and critically appraise the care decisions made and the interventions used. You'll identify, analyse, and debate the key factors that informed your decision‑making.

In this module, you'll learn to become a safe and effective prescribing practitioner. You'll work in practice with an assigned practice assessor who is a registered healthcare professional and experienced prescriber with suitable equivalent qualifications. You may also work with other practice supervisors. These include non-medical prescribers, pharmacists, or doctors, where relevant, to gain a wider understanding of prescribing practices.

This module enables you to develop your advanced communication, clinical assessment, examination, clinical decision-making, and management skills in your field of practice. You'll gain the ability to critically analyse, synthesise, and review care decisions by discussing, debating, and reviewing alternative approaches to delivery that meet the medico-legal requirements in preparation for a Paediatric Advanced Clinical Practitioner (ACP) role.

You'll cover topics that focus on:

• History-taking skills
• Physical assessment skills
• Mental health assessment in the child
• Management of minor illness, ailment, and injury
• Management of common paediatric conditions, referral points, and limitations of ACP remit in paediatrics
• Diagnostic indicators
• Clinical decision-making skills
• Clinical decision-making theory
• Medico-legal law for advanced practice
• Evidence-based advanced practice
• Safeguarding, referral processes, and the identification of risk in paediatric care
• Working with families and holistic approaches to care and management.

In this module, you'll develop the skills needed to carry out focused assessments of patients with chronic disease. You’ll build clinical decision‑making and management skills related to long‑term conditions.

You'll learn how to critically analyse and review care decisions in chronic disease management. This includes discussing, debating, and comparing different approaches to care delivery.

The module also considers medico‑legal requirements for advanced practice. It embeds ethical and moral principles throughout.

You'll cover topics that focus on:

• Assessment skills of the patient with chronic disease
• Assessment of the patient with exacerbation/decompensation of chronic disease
• Holistic assessment and disease management approaches
• Advanced application of the care and interventions across the disease trajectory including rehabilitation, acute admissions avoidance strategies, carer support, patient self-management techniques and the importance of palliation in chronic disease management
• Clinical decision-making theory in chronic diseases
• Clinical decision-making skills in chronic disease management
• Medico-legal law for advanced practice
• Evidence-based advanced practice in the management of chronic disease.

To access this module, you must have Level 6 clinical skills or equivalent.

In this module, you'll develop role‑specific knowledge of medication management for advanced clinical practice. You’ll strengthen your understanding of how to use medicines safely and effectively in patient care.

You'll build the ability to critically analyse and review care decisions related to medicines. This includes discussing, debating, and evaluating the appropriateness of interventions and alternative approaches to care.

The module covers both pharmacological and therapeutic interventions. It also addresses medico‑legal requirements for advanced practice, with ethical and moral principles embedded throughout.

You'll cover topics that focus on:

• Reflexivity in the assessment of one's own learning goals and competency areas for practice in relation to medicines management
• Consultation skills and the facilitation of shared decision-making in medicines management
• Understanding how medicines work, the effect this may have on presenting symptoms, and how to ensure appropriate medicines management to maintain health and wellbeing within the scope of practice
• Compliance and concordance with medicines
• Reviewing and monitoring of medicines
• Therapeutics in context
• Governance in the context of medicines management and therapeutics
• Evidence-based advanced practice in the management of medicines
• Analysis of the changing scope of practice in therapeutic interventions.

This module is perfect for:

• Practitioners prescribing in new or advancing roles
• Those who can't prescribe but need an enhanced knowledge of medicines management in context (for example, occupational therapists)
• Those who need enhanced medication knowledge as part of their professional credentials (for example, Royal College of Emergency Medicine).

This Level 7 module introduces advanced clinical practice and supports the development of key academic skills. Using a bench-to-bedside approach, you'll explore the patient journey from first presentation to diagnosis and ongoing management, linking diagnostic science with patient-centred care.

You'll build skills in:

• Holistic assessment
• Clinical reasoning
• Diagnostic interpretation. This includes history taking, body systems assessment, mental health assessment and evidence-based decision-making.

The module also covers multidisciplinary working, medicolegal issues, risk management and the use of local and national policy. By the end of the module, you'll be ready to practise with autonomy, develop differential diagnoses, plan and review care, and maintain high professional standards in complex clinical settings.

This module explores quality governance, regulation and risk management in clinical pathology. You'll learn about the role of key regulatory and accreditation bodies, including:

• United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS)
• Health and Safety Executive (HSE)
• Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)
• Human Tissue Authority (HTA)
• Institute of Biomedical Science (IBMS)

and how their standards shape advanced practice.

You'll cover quality assurance in

• Laboratory services
• Audit and root cause analysis
• Validation and verification of tests
• The meaning of sensitivity, specificity and measurement uncertainty.

You'll also develop skills in risk assessment, incident reporting and investigation, and the use of reference values and genomic data to support diagnosis. On completion, you'll be able to apply regulatory standards, manage risk effectively and support safe, evidence-based care in complex healthcare settings.

In this module, you'll fulfil the requirements of the role as outlined in the national framework for the ACP Education Pillar. You'll engage in peer learning and practice community and your individual partnerships with your practice, educational, and academic supervisor.

You'll gain confidence and expertise by creating an inclusive learning environment. You'll do this by linking to the standards for learning and assessment in practice using teaching and learning methodologies in clinical practice. You'll then develop teaching materials, formulating a teaching plan. This is alongside differing approaches to learning, such as:

• Simulation scenario
• Recognising peer support alternate learning styles
• Coaching approaches.

This module will help you evidence and better understand and use leadership capabilities as a lesser-known dimension of advanced clinical practitioner roles. You'll develop language that describes leadership to help you recognise the leadership capabilities you demonstrate as part of your daily practice.

You'll gain the ability to describe your leadership role to policymakers, decision-makers, other healthcare professionals, and the public, enhancing understanding of the role and optimising leadership capabilities in dynamic, unpredictable settings. You'll also develop leadership capability to improve service and practice and lead across patient, organisational, and system goals.

In this module, you'll develop your abilities in critical appraisal, research utilisation, and the application to informing and improving clinical practice. You'll start to understand the wider context of evidence-based practice and the scientific paradigm. You'll develop a deeper understanding of the philosophical, theoretical, and methodological basis of clinical research and the practical application of research concepts and findings to advanced practice.

You'll then explore the underpinning rationale behind clinical developments from a research, political, and ethical perspective, analysing the role of evidence-based practice from a policy-making perspective and considering the wider issues which interplay to shape clinical services. This will allow you to gain the confidence to disseminate research findings across your clinical networks.

This module will allow you to reflect on and provide evidence of the contextualisation of the four pillars of advanced practice as relevant to your area of practice. Using a systematic approach to critical enquiry, you'll identify and deconstruct key issues in the literature to develop a comprehensive review of a relevant topic to your specialist area. You'll consider the socioeconomic and political drivers underpinning service development, delivery, and practice change. This critical review will form the basis for a comprehensive discussion prepared for publication to a peer audience.

On successful completion of the apprenticeship, you'll be able to manage defined episodes of clinical care from beginning to end. You'll provide care and treatment from the time an individual first presents through to the end, which may include admission, referral, or discharge or care at home.

At this stage, the MSc degree will have combined academic and workbased learning and assessment together with the End Point Assessment (EPA) that provides synoptic assessment of the achievement of knowledge, skills, and behaviours outlined in the HEE Advanced Clinical Practice Framework and Apprenticeship standard. This assessment will deliver a valid, reliable, and independent judgement that you've achieved the standard required to gain the MSc Advanced Clinical Practitioner qualification.