MSc Advanced Clinical Practitioner Apprenticeship
2025/26
ST0564 Course fee: £12,000.00
Academic level: 7
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Prerequisites
- You’ll need a first degree in a relevant subject or equivalent, alongside current professional UK registration as a healthcare professional with a minimum of 3 years post-registration experience. You must be employed as a healthcare professional for a minimum of 30hrs per week with employer support and access to appropriate workplace supervision for the duration of the apprenticeship.
You can transfer from a degree programme to the apprenticeship but where you transfer from a full-time further education or higher education course and that course has been funded by a student loan, the loan must be terminated by you with evidence of this as part of your application.
GCSE and/or level 2 English and Maths
For candidates who achieved their qualifications in the UK, you must provide evidence that you have achieved these qualifications before you can join the apprenticeship. You must submit your certificates with your application form. If you cannot find your certificates please refer to get a replacement exam certificate on GOV.UK.
If English is not the apprentice’s first language, normally ILETS (academic) 7.0 or above, minimum of 7.0 in each component.
For candidates who achieved their English and maths qualifications outside the UK, you will need to obtain evidence of proof of equivalency from UK ENIC. This confirmation certificate must be submitted with your application.
Course details
- Mapped to Health Education England’s (2017) Multi-professional framework for ACP and the Institute for Apprenticeships (2018) ACP capabilities, this multi-professional, personalised and adaptable course is designed for experienced healthcare professionals from a wide and diverse range of professions and settings.
On this flexible, individually-tailored pathway you’ll not only gain the academic qualification, but also transform your role and meet the competence and capabilities for ACP status recognition. Musculoskeletal (MSK) practitioners can opt to undertake MSK focused clinical option units which are aligned to the competences and capabilities within the NHSE WT&E MSK credential to advance their MSK practice.
You’ll study a hands-on, clinically-focused curriculum that puts patient care front and centre, whilst incorporating the other core pillars of education, leadership/management, and research.
You will be taught by experts in the field including academic lecturers, specialist and advanced clinical practitioners and pharmacists, and will benefit from using our outstanding on-site facilities, including our Clinical Simulation facility and Immersive Learning Environment.
- Advanced Clinical Practitioners are experienced clinicians who independently manage clinical care processes from start to finish. Working across traditional health and social care boundaries, they combine expert clinical skills with research, education and leadership (Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, 2018).
The Advanced Clinical Practice apprenticeship has been designed to meet the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (2018) Advanced Clinical Practitioner apprenticeship Standard, a framework which fits with an employer-led approach to ensure the educational and professional development requirements for the current and future advanced clinical practice workforce are met.
As an ACP apprentice, you will work towards meeting learning outcomes that furnish you with the Knowledge, Skills and Behaviours, and underpinning values of the ACP Apprenticeship Standard. With a strong emphasis on work-based learning, learning occurs both in the classroom but predominantly in the healthcare environment, where you are supported by appropriate workplace supervisor/s.
Learning Outcomes
1. Enable apprentices to work towards competent and confident advanced clinical practice within a clinical practice setting. This is characterised by expanded knowledge, skills and behaviours to meet nationally agreed capabilities and specific competencies, across four pillars of advanced practice (Clinical Practice, Leadership and Management, Education, Research (Health Education England [HEE] 2017), predominantly within direct clinical care. As this course is the ACP integrated degree apprenticeship, apprentices must meet all of the knowledge, skills and behaviours, underpinned by the values within the ACP Apprenticeship standard (IfATE 2018)
2. Ensure graduates are able to deliver Advanced Clinical Practice as practitioners within the context of their identified practice setting that meets contemporary and future workforce requirements of healthcare providers, working collaboratively and across professional and organisational boundaries.
3. Support graduates in demonstrating functional principles of advanced practice within their roles: autonomous practice, critical thinking, advanced levels of decision making and problem solving, values-based and personalised care, innovating practice, management/leadership
4. Encompass academic achievement at level 7, alongside advanced professional role development within the apprentice’s own clinical practice setting, embedding the ACP role therein.
5. Guide apprentices towards successfully completing a relevant, comprehensive process of assessment of theoretical and practical knowledge, skills and behaviours, supported by significant academic, clinical and professional support, to consolidate, apply and assimilate newly gained or further developed advanced practice competence and capability. This culminates with successful completion of the independently assessed ACP Apprenticeship end point assessment.
6. Facilitate autonomous, independent and self-directed learners who are practitioners who possess advanced clinical skills and knowledge within their specific area of clinical practice and/or profession that is informed by current practice, scholarship and research.
7. Provide opportunities for apprentices to engage in learning, supporting creation of new knowledge and innovative working practices at the forefront of their professional discipline and aligned to advanced professional practice
8. Embed and enhance apprentices’ critical thinking and analysis skills to engage with best evidence in order to tackle and solve problems in circumstances requiring sound judgement, personal responsibility and initiative in complex and unpredictable professional environments
9. Enable apprentices to enhance their critical awareness and understanding of contemporary issues and ongoing developments in their clinical work setting, necessary for improving and leading practice within the context of collaborative interprofessional working
10. Facilitate development of apprentices’ knowledge and understanding of autonomous practice - professional responsibility, legality, integrity, values and ethics, risk management and maintenance of safe working practice, in relation to advancing and advanced level practice.
11. Engender in apprentices’ the ability to consider and respond to service user/carer perspectives, focusing on patient advocacy, empowerment and a strong person-centred approach to care.
12. Ensure that the healthcare professionals who have followed this flexible and learner-centred course of study meet their personal and professional development needs, as they have concomitantly progressed within their roles towards advanced level practice
13. Ensure that graduates are suitably prepared to work as advanced clinical practitioners within the identified workplace setting, having fully embraced seamlessly merged workplace-based learning and development, alongside the academic course at Masters level (level 7) that maps to the standards of education and training for AP courses (HEE 2020) and the requirements of the Institute of Apprenticeships (IfATE 2018) ACP Apprenticeship Standard.
14. Enable apprentices to identify, articulate and meet their own learning needs for their ACP roles and patients, congruent with relevant specific competency and capability framework/s for knowledge, skills and behaviours expected of an ACP (currently Health Education England’s Multi-professional framework for advanced clinical practice (HEE 2017) and IfATE (2018) Advanced Clinical Practitioner apprenticeship standard.
For apprentices who select to undertake HCPC-approved independent and supplementary prescribing as part of their course, the framework for competency and capability also includes the RPS competences for all prescribers, adopted by HCPC standards for prescribing. Specific to MSK practitioners who undertake the MSK focused clinical option units, these apprentices will also be working towards meeting the requirements for MSK-specific frameworks, including MACP Advanced Practice criteria and the competences and capabilities within the NHSE WTE MSK credential.
Course info
Course leader: Amy Cooke
Contact us: apprenticeships@aecc.ac.uk
Enquiries phone: +44 (0) 1202 436200
Mode of Delivery: Blended Learning
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Funding
This course is funded through the Growth & Skills (Apprenticeship) Levy
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