What work do assistant practitioners do and where do they fit in the nursing workforce?

To understand where assistant practitioners fit in the workforce and examine the roles they are asked to undertake, by comparing their job descriptions with the policy vision.

A total of 27 job descriptions from three acute trusts were analysed to highlight similarities and differences between the documents. The analysis focused on how clinical tasks related to the level of responsibility APs were expected to assume as part of their role.

The analysis revealed the following categories for APs' job descriptions: fully assistive (one description); supportive/assistive (nine); supportive/substitutive (nine); substitutive/autonomous (seven); and fully autonomous (one). This revealed a number of inconsistencies in the form of different organisational expectations about the AP role.

This study highlights that it is still not clear what managers and workforce planners want from the AP role as it does not have a clearly defined position in the clinical hierarchy, despite being located at level four on the Skills for Health (2006) framework.