Towards a framework for post-registration nursing careers: a national consultation
Department of Health
December 2007
This consultation, now closed, proposed a more managed pathway for continuing professional development for all qualified nurses following registration.
The underlying theme of this consultation is to develop more community nurses, starting their career in the community and with a focus on health prevention, health promotion and public health.
Five career pathways are proposed:
- Children, public and family health pathway
- First contact, access and urgent care pathway
- Long term care pathway
- Acute and critical care pathway
- Mental health and psychosocial care pathway
Nurses can range from novice to expert in any pathway. The plan is to enable a flexible approach to CPD that will allow nurses to focus their expertise on one of the planned career pathways.
Core competences across all pathways are envisaged, in:
- Health promotion
- Preventative long term conditions management or crisis monitoring
- Safeguarding vulnerable people and those in need
- End of life care
- Holistic care
Nurses will develop a 'competency portfolio', transferring core competences between areas of expertise.
There is much to applaud in this consultation, such as national standards for nursing including grades, titles, competences and qualifications required. This should make the requirements for nurse specialist posts more uniform and clearer across conditions. However, the MS Trust is concerned that the proposed pathways do not allow for nurses to acquire specialist knowledge of MS and risk being less rather than more flexible as at present.
A copy of the full document is available from the Department of Health website.
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