Spotlight on Care: Advanced Care Practitioners (ACPs)

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4th May 2022
Lindsey Lodge provides advanced nurse and therapy-led care through our two ACPs Occupational Therapist Sarah Hodge and Nurse Karen Parkes, whose education, knowledge and skills have enabled them to expand their scope of practice to work autonomously.

Our ACPs aim to support individuals to transition from acute services, but above all to enable individuals to access high quality palliative and end of life care.

Sarah and Karen have followed a supported ePortfolio route for their accreditation, which enables their education and training to be recognised by the Centre for Advancing Practice and helps them to be supported in evidencing their advanced clinical practice.
Karen and Sarah

This accreditation reflects that they are educated to Masters Level and gives reassurance that their education and training at an advanced level is formally recognised and evidences their core capabilities across four pillars: Clinical practice, leadership and management, education and research.

The referrals we receive for our ACP-led beds are predominantly from acute services, and we have established firm working relationships with the discharge liaison service and other community providers to enable a smooth transition for patients and their families to access our service.

Our ACP-led care allows to us to offer quality end of life care to a new cohort of patients who may usually die in an acute setting, or at home. The ACPs are fully autonomous in admitting, the patient, making their care plan with them and prescribing their drugs, without the need of the medical team.

The ACP development has gone hand in hand with our bed expansion from 10 to 16. Being able to pilot ‘two’ ACP led beds prior to the establishment of the full six has enabled learning and development to shape the future service we deliver and also how we hope to develop the ACP led beds over the coming months.

We have recently been successful in our submission for another Advanced Care Practitioner (ACP) at Lindsey Lodge via Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership Faculty of Advanced Practice. This means  Sophie Clifford has taken up this level 7 apprenticeship role in September at the University of Hull over a three year period.
Sophie Clifford
Developing, retaining, and transforming the workforce through Advanced Practice offers many benefits to Lindsey Lodge, patients and the community, putting a greater focus on prevention, holistic and personalised care, efficient teams, faster response to patient needs that all result in better patient care.