Evaluation for ACP Programme (Early stage evaluation of the Academy of Advanced Practice)

From September 2018, Health Education England (HEE) in partnership with NHSE, NHSI and national stakeholders will develop a National Academy for Advanced Clinical Practice [Academy]. HEE will support adoption and roll out by offering a supporting infrastructure, oversight, governance and quality assurance to the Academy. This work will start with the development of an England-wide network for those interested in advanced and consultant practice roles. This will include an online co-production workshop, followed by face to face co-production opportunities at the National ACP and Consultant Conference in November 2018.

The Academy is being considered in order to:
- reduce unwarranted variation in training routes by accrediting recognisable, transferable ‘kite marked’ qualifications and a standardised national equivalence route
- map and ensure ACPs meet the requirements of the ACP Framework system-wide
- support the development of work-based learning and assessment, ensuring the development of speciality specific clinical expertise at level 7 (within the context of the interdependent four pillars of ACP)
- build the identitity of ACPs as confident regulated professionals, enabled to work at a specific level of practice
- support the notion of further career opportiunities and not just jobs
- offer developmental opporunities
- offer a degree of assurance to the public, employers and peers as to the training standard of the individual
- investigate the opportunity for discussions relating to regulation/register/list

Please note this work must be inclusive of:
- all non medical regulated professions – nurses, midwives, allied health professionals, psychology, healthcare scientists and pharmacists.
- All health and care settings
- All specialisms from acute care - community learning disability - primary care etc.
- Non-dentist dental professions


Research component 1:

To work with members of the ACP community in England to explore the current state of ACP as viewed through the eyes of the community and their employers. To understand the efficacy of pathways to train, current governance, roles, attitudes, experience, hopes and other thematic issues to be determined. This will require large scale data collection, focus groups and other mechanisms to engage building upon the learning from and triangulating with the origional crowd sourcing work. This will also establish a second touch point to map progress. This will require consultants and advanced practitioners to be considered together and separately.

Research component 2:

Accreditation and Equivalance of the Academy: To work with the Academy team and also drawing learning from any UK and international partners, to evaluate the accreditation and equivalance processes to ensure proprotionate best practice and continuous improvement.

Research component 3:

Work based learning: The ACP training routes will require optimisation of an evidence-based approach to work-based learning, assessment of advanced level practice, and as an integral part of MSc/modular programmes of study, to drive workforce transformation in service. Working with HEE and the Council of Deans for Health steering group, postgraduate medical education, HEE UEC supervision project and drawing learning from any UK and international partners, to determine effective evidence-based guidance for the system, and including best practice examples.

Active dissemination through a variety of media; including papers and conference presentation, which are a core component throughout the duration of the work and it is required that these will be planned, and all papers co-authored in partnership across the evaluation leads and the HEE programme leads.

Please note:
Tenders comprising all the documents requested MUST be submitted via the ‘Supplying to the NHS’ Portal, www.supplying2nhs.org no later than Friday, 11 January 2019 at 14:00 hours using the My Response section within the Invitation to Tender. The closing time/date for receipt of tenders is clearly marked on the portal and you are recommended to upload all documents and submit your tender submission in sufficient time for it to reach the server prior to the closing time/date stated. The server automatically time/date stamps all tender submissions