This 18-month apprenticeship programme will support you to gain knowledge and skills for developing the Enhanced Clinical Practice Role. Enhanced Clinical Practice is applicable over a range of clinical roles and specialities and will support learners building expanded skills in healthcare and leadership.

Enhanced Clinical Practice roles can be effective across a range of clinical environments. Examples of areas include, but are not limited to:

• Primary and secondary care
• Palliative Care
• Social Care
• Occupational therapy
• Physiotherapy
• Pharmacology
• Specialist nursing

As an Enhanced Clinical Practitioner, you will:

• Provide a high standard of complex, enhanced care for patients
• Employ enhanced levels of clinical judgement, skills and knowledge
• Undertake assessments of patient need and devise and evaluate complex care plans related to your field of expertise
• Work with patients, their family and carers, and the multi-professional team to devise and deliver excellent patient-centred healthcare solutions 
• Use your clinical expertise and knowledge to critically analyse and resolve clinical problems
• Apply relevant evidence, enhanced assessment skills, diagnostics, interventions, and equipment to make clinical decisions
• Teach and advise patients and their families/carers on how to manage their condition or support the multi-disciplinary team to do so
• Participate in clinical audits and research projects and implement changes within your area of practice, shaping and improving service delivery for your patients
• Act as a leader, coach and role model for colleagues across a variety of disciplines within your area of practice

If you are unsure if you’re role or vocation is applicable, please contact the Programme leader to discuss this further.

The Enhanced Clinical Practitioner programme can be completed at level 6 and level 7

Applicants to study at Level 6 are required to meet the following criteria:

• Academic award at level 5 in an associated healthcare field, such as DipHE or Advanced Dip.
• You must be a nurse, midwife or allied health professional registered with a statutory regulator of health and care professions (i.e. NMC, HCPC), or a professional registered in good standing with Social Work England or with one of the following accredited voluntary registers: The Academy for Healthcare Science, Register of Clinical Technologists or Registration Council for Clinical Physiologists. Where these apply you must undertake revalidation processes or audit of your continuing professional development. Apprentice Educational Audiologists must hold student membership with The Academy for Healthcare Science on entry, and hold full registration with The Academy for Healthcare Science at the gateway to end-point.
• Level 2 qualification in English and Maths. If you do not hold this, you must complete this level prior to applying for the Enhanced Clinical Practitioner programme.
• Operate in a role requiring enhanced skills, ability, and autonomy
• If English is not your first language, you will need to provide evidence that you can understand English to a satisfactory level. English language requirements for this course are normally IELTS (academic) 7.0 or above with minimum 7.0 in each component.

Applicants to study at Level 7 are required to meet the following criteria:

• A Bachelors Honours degree with minimum 2:2 in any subject, or equivalent
• You must be a nurse, midwife or allied health professional registered with a statutory regulator of health and care professions (i.e. NMC, HCPC), or a professional registered in good standing with Social Work England or with one of the following accredited voluntary registers: The Academy for Healthcare Science, Register of Clinical Technologists or Registration Council for Clinical Physiologists. Where these apply you must undertake revalidation processes or audit of your continuing professional development. Apprentice Educational Audiologists must hold student membership with The Academy for Healthcare Science on entry, and hold full registration with The Academy for Healthcare Science at the gateway to end-point.
• Level 2 qualification in English and Maths. If you do not hold this, you must complete this level prior to applying for the Enhanced Clinical Practitioner programme.
• Operate in a role requiring enhanced skills, ability, and autonomy
• If English is not your first language, you will need to provide evidence that you can understand English to a satisfactory level. English language requirements for this course are normally IELTS (academic) 7.0 or above with minimum 7.0 in each component.

For both levels of study, it is important to note the following:

• You cannot commence another DfE funded FE/HE programme, at the same time as any apprenticeship.
• You cannot use a student loan to pay for an apprenticeship. Where an individual transfers to an apprenticeship 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 the individual and confirmed with the University
• Your employer, in conjunction with your supervisor/assessor and the university, will confirm when you have met the criteria and are eligible to progress to the end point assessment.

Your academic level will be determined by the Programme Lead, following a review of your application from and interview.

Employer Requirements

• You must have a contract of service with an employer which is long enough for you to complete the apprenticeship successfully (including, the end-point assessment). This is expected to be typically 18 months.
• You must be employed in clinical practice and be working to a job description that enables development in line with the occupational profile and apprenticeship standard of the Enhanced Clinical Practitioner Apprenticeship.
• You must have support from your employer to work enough hours each week so that you can undertake sufficient regular training and on-the-job activity. This is to ensure you are likely to successfully complete the apprenticeship. You must keep evidence of the agreed average weekly hours, including time spent on off-the-job training.
• On-programme and supervised workplace learning should be structured to enable increasing effectiveness as an Enhanced Clinical Practitioner, as the apprenticeship progresses.  Your progress academically and in the workplace will be monitored at regular intervals prior to gateway progression.
• You must have a suitable, named supervisor / assessor, agreed by your employer and University, who will support you in applying, reinforcing and demonstrating the required knowledge, skills and behaviours within the workplace.
• Your employer must allow you to complete the apprenticeship within working hours. This includes off-the-job training requirement of 20% of your whole-time equivalent hours, as well as the stipulated on-the-job training.

For further information on Apprenticeships please click here

Please note that there is a two-stage application process for this course. The first stage is submitting an application. Once you have submitted your application, the Programme Leader will review it and decide if you can progress to stage 2 of the application process, which is an interview with you and your line manager. 

Course review:

In order to take advantage of new approaches to learning and teaching, as well as developments in practice to benefit our students we regularly review all of our courses. This course is currently going through this process and we will update this page to give you full information about what we will be offering once the review process has concluded.  These changes will come into effect for all new students from September 2025. Applicants will be notified by our admissions team of any changes.