Advanced clinical practitioners in haematology and oncology

Within my scope of professional practice as a nurse consultant with over 20 years' clinical experience within haematology and oncology, I initiated an innovative workforce planning opportunity setting up a dedicated advanced clinical practice service within a secondary NHS service. The first advanced clinical practitioner (ACP) commenced in post in 2015, and we currently have a team consisting of a nurse consultant working as the lead ACP, one ACP for haematology and two ACPs for oncology.

As well as the ability to autonomously conduct history taking and physical examination skills, the ACPs in the team complete several clinical procedures including bone marrow biopsies, central venous access device (CVAD) insertion, ultrasound-guided lumbar punctures and skin biopsies for patients with suspected graft versus host disease. Competency documents were devised for all clinical procedures alongside clinical guidelines and standard operational procedures to ensure we had a robust clinical governance framework and used best evidence-based practice. Table 1 demonstrates some of the procedures with associated income stream performed by the ACP team within the last 12 months