Northumbria University has an established reputation for excellence and innovation in nursing education to build on the future nurse standards in meeting the Community Nursing Specialist Practice Qualification (SPQ) - The Nursing and Midwifery Council (nmc.org.uk).
The Community Specialist Practice Qualification (SPQ) programme is designed to equip postgraduates with the skills required for community specialist practice and there are four pathways to choose from: District Nursing, General Practice Nursing, Adult Social Care Nursing and Community Children’s Nursing.
The GPN role is constantly developing and currently as more care management is delivered from a primary care perspective, this will continue. As practitioners in general practice deliver care across the age spectrum, this role offers an opportunity to deliver specialist and high-quality care across a wide spectrum of presentations and stages of health, wellbeing, and illness. The role provides continuity of care, often negating the requirements to seek medical appointments, and delivers care in a collaborative approach with patients and their carer’s and/or families as appropriate. The course will offer you the opportunity to develop within a stimulating and multi-disciplinary learning environment, on a personal and professional level, resulting in high quality, evidenced based care provision for your patients. It will offer you the opportunity to expand your leadership skills and be confident in-service improvement developments.
Each pathway has a distinct approach to its delivery; however, all share a more practice focused delivery, with a 60/40 split between clinical practice and protected learning time at Northumbria University respectively. This ensures that the specialist field of practice focuses on the specialist skills required for the pathway and is evident in the optional modules and as pathway-focused learning and teaching across all modules.
Students also benefit from integrated learning with fellow community specialist practitioner students. This programme has been innovatively designed and coproduced with a vast range of stakeholders from all pathway routes in both health and social care, to truly reflect contemporary specialist practice, need and service provision requirements.
Registered nurses already hold recognised knowledge and skills of the profession from the Standards Framework for Nursing and Midwifery Education. This ensures that across all fields, registrants can deliver holistic care needs to people they encounter with a range of mental, physical, cognitive, behavioural, social, or spiritual needs. The Standards of Proficiency for Community Nursing Specialist Practice are designed to recognise new models to meet the diverse needs of people of all ages, in their home, in settings close to home and in the community.
These Standards of Proficiency for Community Nursing Specialist Practice will provide additional knowledge and skills for postgraduate community nurses to record Specialist Practice Qualifications on the NMC register. Equipped with the SPQ qualification, these community nurses will build on these proficiencies as they gain cultural competence, experience, and fulfil their professional responsibility. They will demonstrate their commitment to develop as a specialist community practitioner, building a career pathway, and engaging in ongoing education and professional development opportunities necessary for revalidation.