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Leadership in Advanced Clinical Practice

Apply leadership theories to inform, manage, and develop healthcare services. Identify service needs, improvements, challenges, and opportunities. Develop leadership capabilities to improve service and clinical practice.

A student doctor examining a manikin patient in a mock ward hospital bed with three student nurses and student doctor
LevelShort courses and CPD
Duration9 months
Start dates16 February 2026
Fee£840
Course codeCID1564

Course summary

This 20-credit, Level 7 module will enable you to understand, use, and apply leadership theories to a range of advanced clinical practice roles to inform, lead, manage, and develop healthcare services. You'll develop leadership competency and capabilities and demonstrate these in the context of your developing advanced practice roles.

You'll acquire skills to articulate the advanced clinical practice leadership role to policymakers, decision‐makers, other healthcare professionals, and the public, enhancing understanding of the advanced practice role and optimising advanced clinical practice leadership capabilities in dynamic and unpredictable settings.

You'll also develop leadership capability to improve service and clinical practice working on an individual, systems, and organisational level and identify service needs, improvements, challenges, and opportunities applying real-life problem-solving skills.

The course is directly mapped against the Multi-Professional Framework (NHSE) for Advanced Clinical Practice

What you'll study

You'll gain knowledge and skills in the following, in line with the leadership pillar of Advanced Clinical Practice:

  • Theories of management and leadership and their application in healthcare
  • Change management models and their application to healthcare
  • Leadership framework history and theory
  • Leadership theories in healthcare provider service transformation, quality improvement, and continual service development
  • Theories of emotional intelligence and the context of effective leadership.

How you'll learn

This course runs from February to November 2026. The number of face-to-face taught hours for the course is 16, with 20 directed study hours and 164 independent study hours.

Face-to-face teaching is delivered at City Campus every other week, from February to July, with a written assessment due in November.

Assessment takes the form of a written assignment submitted online, assessing all course learning outcomes.

Entry requirements

Fees and finance support

The employer usually meets course costs – we advise you to speak to your workforce development lead before applying.

We also accept self-funded applicants and encourage anyone wishing to explore their options to contact cpd@sunderland.ac.uk(opens in new tab).

Apply now

Contact the Corporate and Professional Education team for further information about applying for this course by calling 0191 515 3361(opens in new tab) or emailing cpd@sunderland.ac.uk(opens in new tab).