Courses  >  Advanced Practice

As patients with stable chronic conditions are increasingly being managed in the community sector, the majority of patients now treated in the hospital sector are acutely and severely ill. Advanced pharmacist practitioners who can manage and prescribe medicines safely and effectively, have a clear role to play in the treatment and care provided to these complex patients, particularly in the current challenging economic environment.

NICPLD has collaborated with colleagues in the School of Pharmacy at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) to develop a new MSc in Advanced Pharmacy Practice (with Independent Prescribing). This programme has been designed for hospital pharmacists in Northern Ireland who wish to develop their practice to an advanced level, and is a natural progression from the VT Programme.

The course content is based on the competencies specified in the Advanced and Consultant Level Framework (ACLF), developed by CoDEG. The aims of the QUB MSc in Advanced Pharmacy Practice (with Independent Prescribing) are to facilitate pharmacists in attaining "Excellence" level based on the competencies defined in the ACLF, and to enable graduates to register as Independent Prescribers with the Pharmaceutical Society of NI or the GPhC.

For further information on competency frameworks and the new advanced practice course, click here.

For further information about how to apply for about the course, click here.

NICPLD provides the following, as part of the QUB MSc in Advanced Pharmacy Practice (with Independent Prescribing) course:

• The NICPLD non-medical prescribing course.
• The NICPLD Advanced Practice Development (APD) module.

Both of these are also available as a standalone course/module to pharmacists not doing the QUB MSc in Advanced Pharmacy Practice (with Independent Prescribing) course.