The Association of Advanced Nursing Practice Educators (AANPE)
WWW.AANPE.ORG
The Association of Advanced Nursing Practice Educators (AANPE) is an influential collaboration of United Kingdom (UK) Universities who are providers of advanced clinical programmes of education for nurses and other allied health professions.
The AANPE terms of reference are to serve as a forum for:
§ Collaborative curriculum development and standard setting for Nurse Practitioner education across the 4 countries of the UK.
§ Establishing the role and status of Nurse Practitioners through interface with other professions, professional and statutory bodies, commissioners, employers and relevant government bodies
§ Collaboration between United States of America (USA) and UK Nurse Practitioner education providers via the National Organisation of Nurse Practitioner Faculties (USA NONPF) and the AANPE.
§ Sharing information on national and international developments that are pertinent to Nurse Practitioner education, to promote best practice.
§ Networking, problem sharing, problem solving and mutual support.
§ Acting as an expert advisory group for consultation, professional advice and policy development.
Today the AANPE has established close links with the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Nurse Practitioner Association and the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). In addition, the AANPE has played a significant part in the implementation of the national competency standard for Advanced Nurse Practitioner (ANP) practice and its prospective inclusion to the nursing register by the NMC.
The beginnings of the AANPE lie in the USAs NONPF. NONPF was established in 1980 following the introduction of Nurse Practitioners to clinical practice in the USA in the mid 1960s. It arose as a direct result of American Universities wish to ensure that there was a forum for dialogue on Nurse Practitioner education issues across the USA. NONPF’s mission was (is) the provision of leadership in promoting quality nurse practitioner education at a national and international level. That mission would, by the early 1990s, give foundation to the very early development of a UK wide network of nurse practitioner educators.
Varied programmes of specialist and advanced nursing practice education in the UK can be identified as long ago as the 1970s and 1980s, this evidenced by the Clinical Nurse Specialists who were abundant in clinical practice at that time. However, the pioneers of UK Nurse Practitioners did not emerge in practice until the late 1980s, and it was not until the early 1990s that Higher Education collaborations can first be identified. The most significant of those education collaborations arose in response to the implementation and franchise of the RCN ‘Nurse Practitioner’ Diploma, when a small group of UK University representatives began to meet on a regular basis, and tentatively shared their educational experiences and expertise. As the 1990s progressed, and as programmes of nurse practitioner and advanced clinical practice education proliferated, the number of Universities involved in this early network slowly grew.
In October 2000, the fledgling educational network called a general meeting of UK University representatives (all of who were providing some form of Nurse Practitioner education) at the RCN in London. The attendees of that meeting concluded that a formal education forum was needed in the UK to facilitate the sharing of good practice and standard setting for Nurse Practitioner education.
The inaugural meeting of UK NONPF took place in November 2001, a decade after the first RCN Nurse Practitioner Diploma course had began. UK NONPF membership slowly increased during 2002 and 2003, and by late 2003 a series of key meetings led to the establishment of a formal network link with the extensive national RCN Nurse Practitioner Association.
In 2005 UK NONPF changed its name to the Association of Advanced Nursing Practice Educators (AANPE) and was formally re launched as a new independent Association. Professional and educational interest in the activity of the AANPE was now increasing nationally at a dramatic rate.
By early 2007 the AANPE had forged a collaboration of Universities that was unprecedented in scale and nature in the UK, with formal membership from 40 UK Universities, and 120 academics and other senior health professionals in its membership distribution lists. The AANPE also now had co-opted advisors from both the RCN and NMC to assist in its consultation work.
Today the AANPE is responding regularly to government (DoH), regional and professional consultations. The NMC has publicly acknowledged the influence of the AANPE and the RCN seeks the AANPEs advice on matters of ANP education and regulation. From its beginning in the early 1990s, the AANPE has evolved to become a national, influential, and powerful voice in the world of Advanced Clinical Nursing.