Work is progressing on developing the route by which healthcare professionals can become advanced practitioners specialising in remote and rural areas.
The Scottish Rural Medicine Collaborative (SRMC) has been working with the Remote and Rural Healthcare Educational Alliance (RRHEAL) and NHS Education for Scotland to plot out the course people would take towards qualification for the role.
The aim is to identify an affordable, standardised education and training pathway for multi-disciplinary rural practitioners at advanced practice level.
A seminar was held in the Centre for Health Science, Inverness, on 29th January, to pass on to key remote, rural and island NHS boards and educational partners details of the initial consultation that has taken place on the subject.
RRHEAL programme director Pam Nicoll set out the background context before a briefing was given on the consultation by Pam’s colleagues, Claire Savage and Trish Gray.
The seminar was also addressed by Belinda O’Sullivan, of the University of Queensland, who spoke about a checklist for implementing rural pathways, and Professor Angus Watson, whose subject was Royal College of Surgeons’ rural capability framework.
In addition, SRMC programme manager Martine Scott and Lisa MacInnes, from BASICS Scotland, also talked about the education pathway for rural advanced practitioners (RAPs) from the perspective of their respective organisations.
The seminar featured a productive afternoon of workshops and discussions and it is planned to summarise these discussions and to circulate findings in due course.
Further details on the work are available on RRHEAL’s website.