The nursing resource constitutes the largest expenditure within the National Health Service and needs to be deployed effectively and efficiently.  The NHS is seeking to make better use of staff resources and an important aspect of this is developing roles and careers for support staff.  This has included development of the assistant practitioner role - a ‘higher level’ or ‘enhanced’ support worker role - to complement and substitute some of the duties and responsibilities of registered nurses.  It is anticipated that the introduction of assistant practitioners (also sometimes called Associate Practitioners or Lead Healthcare Assistants) will release registered nurses to take on more advanced/specialist roles and thus promote more effective and efficient use of the nurse staffing resource.

 

Increasing numbers of assistant practitioners are being employed across a variety of clinical settings, yet little is known about where the role has been introduced and how the role is developing to support patient care.  Researchers at the University of York have been funded by the Department of Health NHS Service Delivery and Organisation Programme to undertake a study to explore the development and impact of assistant practitioner (AP) roles supporting the work of ward-based registered nurses in acute NHS (hospital) Trusts in England.  Acton Shapiro has been commissioned to carry out the national survey for this study, which essentially seeks to understand the potential impact on staff practice (deployment of the nursing workforce) and quality of care.  There are no skill mix studies that include this new role.  Further information about this study is available at http://www.sdo.nihr.ac.uk/sdo1592006.html.

The objectives of the study are: