How do the 4 Pillars of Advanced Practice relate to you if you are not an Advanced Physiotherapy Practitioner?
The four pillars of advanced practice were published in 2017 to provide guidance on how clinicians can demonstrate their ability to work at an advanced level. Click here to see the Multiprofessional Framework for Advanced Clinical Practice in England.
However, in recent years, the structure provided through the four pillars model has been encouraged to be used through all experience levels and not restricted to advanced practice.
I challenge you to have a 👀read of my post👀. Then download my SWOT Analysis Template 👇👇👇 to identify where your Superpowers (Strengths) and Work Ons (Weaknesses) are currently and identify some Next Steps on how to move yourself higher up the four pillars of advanced practice 🏛.
I’ve included some ideas of where to get started, in each of the four pillars regardless of your level of experience 👍.
How do the 4 Pillars of Advanced Practice relate to you if you are not an Advanced Physiotherapy Practitioner?
1. Leadership and Management
2. Education
3. Clinical Practice
4. Research
5. SWOT Analysis Template
1. Leadership and Management
Leadership and management is often the pillar where less experienced Physiotherapists feel they are lacking in skills.
However, a leader is simply someone who demonstrates specific values and behaviors and invites others along with them.
To be a leader you don’t need to be the most knowledgeable or have the most experience within the team.
The way you interact with patients and team members can demonstrate your leadership qualities.
It is important that at every stage of your career, whether in training or working towards a more recognised leadership role, such as a Band 7 position, that you seek opportunities to develop this pillar.
Ideas:
Taking Team Meeting notes
Putting items on the agenda for Team Meetings
Leading a Team Meeting
Feeding back to Managers outcomes of Team Meetings
As you can see, using the Idea of a Team Meetings can demonstrate the different ways you can be involved with Leadership and Management. You can layer up your input as you become more confident and experienced within your role.
2. Education
Education is a pillar we are all familiar with as Physiotherapists. We sign up for lifelong learning as part of our profession. Some of us even enjoy making that power point presentation for an in-service training session.
It is important that at any level you are able to educate others. Don’t forget! Adapting your communication during treatment sessions and looking at your patient holistically fits into this pillar too.
Ideas:
A patient information leaflet
A patient group education session
An IST relating to your patient group to the team
A poster presentation at a conference about the impact of your education session on the patient group/colleagues/trust.
As you can see a simple idea of patient education can layer up into educating a wider and wider network of people. This demonstrates impact from your education skills.
3. Clinical Practice
Clinical Practice is the one pillar that most Physiotherapists will feel confident that they really understand what is expected of them.
Our main role is to provide clinical assessments and treatments to our patients.
Each role we have has specific knowledge, skills and behaviors that are expected. Anything outside of these parameters are deemed out of our scope of practice. It is important to know what these boundaries are and you can find them in your job specification.
At any level of practice we must be able to demonstrate that we can treat our patients holistically, work within our scope of practice, and understand when it is appropriate to seek support.
Ideas:
Early career - assessment and treatment of patients, identifying areas for learning, seeking support from more experienced colleagues, attending training to improve all round knowledge.
Middle career - All of early career plus, managing more complex patients, identifying training needs in less experienced colleagues. Attending training sessions for more complex and nuanced patient groups.
Advanced career - All of middle career plus, integrating with wider networks specific to specialty, seeking mentoring from practitioners outside of Physiotherapy to support with extended scope roles. Enroll on MSc modules or equivalent to develop clinical skills.
As you can see no matter what level you are working at it is important to understand where your focus should be clinically. There will always be new research being produced on how we should best manage our patients. It is important to ensure that we are constantly willing to challenge and develop our clinical practice to meet the needs of our patients.
4. Research
You don’t have to be a researcher or involved in a Research study to start to develop this pillar.
Unless you are in an advanced Physiotherapy Practitioner role or a clinical researcher role your access to first hand research may be limited.
Don’t forget, reading and synthesising the literature to inform your practice fits into this role. You have already started developing this skill during your Physiotherapy training.
When reading research, you must decide if the evidence is robust enough to implement the findings and whether it is relevant to your patient cohort and feasible to implement in your clinical environment. This is not restricted to experienced Physiotherapists, we should be empowering staff at every level to develop their research skills.
Ideas:
Reading the literature on a topic of interest to you, critique it using a CASP tool.
Make a presentation or share your insights on how it can inform your practice with colleagues.
Start a journal club with your colleagues, other people’s insights can be valuable to developing your research skills.
Audit a specific part of your role, use the data to inform decision making within your team.
Present a poster on how your audit has changed or proven current practice within your area at a conference.
Become a data collector for a research project relevant to your area of practice.
Enroll in MSc modules/ equivalent to develop research skills.
With Research, it is important to take your time when developing this skill. It can be the pillar that takes the most time to develop and where at certain points in your career there will seem like few opportunities. By getting more involved in conversations with colleagues, you may find that opportunities present themselves more readily.
5. SWOT Analysis Template
So there you have it - A brief summary of the four pillars of advanced practice and a few ideas on how you can develop your skills.
You may see a question on the four pillars popping up in an upcoming interview! So it is good to be prepared!
Make sure you download your SWOT Analysis template to identify your Superpowers (Strengths) and Work Ons (Weaknesses) and identify your Next Steps on how to move yourself higher up the four pillars of advanced practice. 👇👇👇
Where are you at on your 4 Pillars journey?
Have I given you any ideas?
Do you have any ideas to share that will help other like minded Physiotherapists?
Write in the comments below 👇👇👇
About the Blogger:
Hi, I’m Rebekah.
I’m a Physiotherapist with a passion to support others to get to where they want to be. I love to organise and plan which, comes in handy for my mission to empower others to achieve their Physiotherapy career goals.
