Competency Framework

Admiral Nurses are specialist dementia care nurses. Their casework focuses primarily on the needs of carers and supporters of people with dementia. Their educative and consultative role aims to improve the delivery of dementia services.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Gerontological Nursing Programme was funded by Dementia UK to work part-time from August 2000 to March 2002, to develop the Admiral Nurses' Competency Framework. A full account of the Competency Project is presented in the final report (Traynor and Dewing, 2002).

The aim of the project was to use an action research approach to work with Admiral Nurses to develop a competency framework for the Admiral Nurse Service that reflected the Nursing and Midwifery Council's Higher Level Practice standards (HLP) (UKCC, 2002).

The outcome of the project is the Admiral Nurses' Competency Framework, which contains a set of competency statements describing what is expected of Admiral Nurses, and accompanying documentation to work through the Competency Framework.

The main aim of the Competency Framework is to support and facilitate Admiral Nurses to produce portfolios of evidence about their competence to practice. In addition, the Competency Framework provides a structured pathway for Admiral Nurses, who wish to, to work towards the NMC's Higher Level Practice award (UKCC, 2002).

Download a summary of AN Competency Framework in PDF format