While it is clear that nurses are playing an increasingly
prominent role in health care provision in the NHS, it is
impossible to describe the exact scale and scope of this change.
This is because there are no formal licensing criteria underpinning
the job titles of nurse practitioner, advanced practice nurse or
clinical nurse specialist. In consequence, there is no centralised
information on the numbers or distribution of such staff. All such
nurses will have been trained to degree level and undertaken
postgraduate training in their specialist area. Many will hold a
Masters degree, although this is not universal. The title “nurse
practitioner” is arguably most often used to describe a registered
nurse with additional postgraduate training who has lead responsibility
for a defined area of health care provision in primary care.
Given the difficulty of defining a nurse practitioner in the United
Kingdom, we focus here on nurses working in these advanced roles
in primary care whether or not they bear the title nurse practitioner.