Within the Trust we have Return To Practice (RTP) and Out Of Practice (OOP) pathways. These are routes by which qualified healthcare professionals can return to clinical practice and regain their confidence and competence in clinical practice and if necessary, their professional registration.
Return To Practice is designed for people whose professional registration has lapsed and they require a formal refresher course provided by a local university, and clinical practice experience in order to apply for re-registration.
The Out Of Practice option is for people who still have a current professional registration but have been out of clinical practice for any reason for a while and need a period of confidence and competence building, before feeling ready to take on the full registered professional role.
In both roles you are employed as a member of the Trust and rota’d into teams to ensure the ‘real life’ experience and team support.
You are not expected to take on the full role and responsibilities until you have either been re-registered with your professional body (RTP), or have the competence and confidence to do so (OOP) as assessed by yourself and your mentor.
Its important to point out that the Trust provides an excellent Preceptorship programme for all new staff and this supportive programme may be enough to build up an Out Of Practice professionals confidence and skills without the need for the formal OOP programme itself.
These posts are employment posts on a 12 month Fixed Term Training Contract, so you are earning while you are undertaking the programme. Because you are not employed to the full remit and responsibilities of the post you are usually paid at a top Band 3 level until your move to a band 5 where the entry point depends on your years of experience. The duration of the RTP programme is set by the university and is usually about 25 weeks with some formal study days led by the university and some supernumerary clinical practice days, between 150 - 300 hours. The OOP programme has no set minimum duration and is individual to yourself.
Whilst both programmes have a 12 month contract, in practice candidates do not need that long, but it does give that option if personal circumstances require it.
People coming on to the programmes come from very individual backgrounds and experience and so we would encourage anyone interested to contact us to discuss their own situation and see which if any, of the programmes are best suited to them.