Please note that this course is not running in our 23/24 academic year.

This course will support you to gain the knowledge and skills required for the development of an Advanced Nurse Practitioner or Advanced Clinical Practice role, both professionally and academically at Master’s level. This is a two-year, part-time course with an optional third year, please see further details below. 

On this course you will be taught by a range of staff with relevant expertise and knowledge appropriate to the content of the units. This will include senior academic staff, lecturer practitioners who work at the university and who work in clinical practice and other qualified healthcare professionals.

The course will facilitate the development of your critical appraisal, analytical and reflective skills, and enable you to integrate new advanced clinical skills and knowledge with your existing experience within your practice setting, in order to support the provision of high quality care and service delivery in an Advanced Clinical Practice within a multi-disciplinary healthcare team.

Why study MSc Advanced Clinical Practice at BU?

• Advanced Clinical Practitioners are experienced clinicians with expertise in their scope of practice, managing defined episodes of clinical care independently, from beginning to end
• Build on your current registrant level of practice through academic and workplace-based learning, to attain advanced clinical practice competencies and capabilities, in-line with nationally recognised advanced level criteria (Health Education England)
• Extend your critical thinking, analytical and reflective skills, and integrate new, as well as enhance existing clinical practice skills, knowledge and competence, within your practice setting
• Gain the skills to support the provision of high-quality healthcare through a more autonomous, independent practice role within the multidisciplinary healthcare team
• if you are an allied health professional, pharmacist, midwife, healthcare scientist or other registered non-medical healthcare professional then the MSc Advanced Clinical practice is appropriate for you, in supporting your advanced clinical practice role.

Year 1 / Level 7

Unit 1 – Advanced Practice: Contextual Issues and Professional Development: You will explore the evolution and current contextual issues surrounding advanced professional practice, in relation to development of your own advanced practice role and discuss, analyse and debate developments and explore the evidence-base of advanced practice, within a multi-professional setting.

Unit 2 – History Taking and Physical Examination for Advancing Practice: You will advance your knowledge of anatomy and physiology and develop knowledge and skills to elicit comprehensive patient histories through a structured consultation process. You’ll learn how to critically assess patients and develop competence in the physical examination of body systems, distinguishing normal from abnormal findings.

Unit 3* – Assessment, Critical Reasoning and Decision-making for Advancing Clinical Practice: You’ll develop knowledge to identify a broad range of clinical problems. You will build on your assessment strategies, in order to enable you to consider differential diagnoses and to subsequently initiate and implement care and treatment plans for patients / service users in your own practice setting. This unit develops your critical thinking, clinical and diagnostic reasoning and decision-making skills, aimed at meeting patient/service user needs and managing complex presentations and conditions.

*Pre-requisite for unit 3 is to have undertaken unit 2. Unit undertaken depends on professional registration status of student.

Year 2 / Level 7

Route 1

Unit 4/5 – Independent and Supplementary Prescribing: This unit prepares you to prescribe safely, appropriately and cost effectively as an independent and supplementary prescriber, in line with obtaining the requisite professional body recordable qualification. You’ll draw on and apply systems-based knowledge and skills to your own practice environment within the context of medicines management and non-medical prescribing.

Unit 6 – Advanced Practice Portfolio: This unit is a culmination of your learning and professional practice development, through critical exploration, reflection and demonstration of knowledge, understanding and skills for the Advanced Clinical Practice or Advanced Nurse Practitioner role. It concludes with production of a personal portfolio of evidence of academic and professional development relevant to advanced level practice, in line with the UK’s advanced practice criteria.  

Route 2 (this option is undertaken for students not taking the Independent and Supplementary Prescribing unit route)

Unit 4a – Evidencing Professional Learning 1 (EPL1): Having attended a structured learning event appropriate to your own advancing clinical role and applied learning outcomes from the event into practice, this unit facilitates the critical evaluation of advanced scholarship and development of reflective skills in relation to your learning and professional development. You'll demonstrate application of the learning outcomes in complex and unpredictable professional contexts and reflection and evaluation of change in practice, related to the specific learning event. 

The learning for EPL1 focuses on enabling the student to enhance and develop knowledge and understanding of pathophysiology and pharmacology.  It supports development of clinical assessment and diagnostic skills, in relation to determining, implementing and evaluating evidence-based pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapeutic interventions, for patients in the student’s own clinical settings.

Unit 5a – Evidencing Professional Learning 2 (EPL2): uses learning from the student’s own clinical setting (as agreed between the student, their supervisor assessor and ACP programme leader) as the basis for further advancing their clinical competence, with emphasis on their area-specific or specialist competences

Unit 6 – Advanced Practice Portfolio: This unit is a culmination of your learning and professional practice development, through critical exploration, reflection and demonstration of knowledge, understanding and skills for the Advanced Clinical Practice or Advanced Nurse Practitioner role. It concludes with production of a personal portfolio of evidence of academic and professional development relevant to advanced level practice, in line with the UK’s advanced practice criteria.  

Year 3 (Optional)

You can either opt to exit the course after successful completion of year 2 with a PGDip Advanced Clinical Practice or notify us that you to continue onto the Master's stage. This final stage of the course comprises of the following two units, which can only be applied for upon completion of Year 2:

Unit 7 - Preparing for Service Improvement Project (PSIP): A service improvement project aims to better a service or services. You’ll learn about an appropriate, systematic and justified methodology in a complex professional area to design an original, intellectually challenging and in-depth SIP action plan for your professional context.

Unit 8 - Service Improvement Project (SIP): You’ll show your autonomous and independent ability in a complex professional context to expand or redefine existing knowledge or develop new approaches to service improvement, and then evaluate your SIP’s impact.

If you are an allied health professional, pharmacist, midwife, healthcare scientist or other registered non-medical healthcare professional then the MSc Advanced Clinical practice is appropriate for you, in supporting your advanced clinical practice role. If you are a Nurse please see our webpage for MSc Advanced Clinical Practice (Advanced Nurse Practitioner)

A Bachelor’s Honours degree with minimum 2:2 in any subject, or equivalent. You must have been registered with your respective statutory regulator of health and care professions (i.e. NMC, HCPC), for a minimum of 3 years and provide proof of current registration. You also need to be engaged in an appropriate clinical role for a minimum of 20 hours a week and currently engaged in and able to maintain a high level of clinical practice, including assessment and physical examination skills, in a clinical setting where development of an advanced clinical practice role has been agreed by the employer. For more information check out our full entry requirements.

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 ACP Programme Leader and team will review it and decide if you can progress to stage 2 of the application process, which is an interview with you, your line manager and a member of the ACP Programme team. 

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.