The ACCEND Programme: Developing the workforce caring for people with cancer

The Aspirant Cancer Career and Education Development Programme (ACCEND) programme commenced in Autumn 2021 to provide guidance and direction on the knowledge, skills and capabilities required by the nursing, allied health professions and pharmacy workforce who care for people affected by cancer in general and specialist cancer services and roles as part of multi-professional teams across the four UK nations.

The ACCEND programme, funded by NHS England (formerly Health Education England), developed through collaboration with several stakeholders across the United Kingdom. The ACCEND Career Pathway, Core Capabilities in Practice and Education Framework (the ‘Framework’) was published in 2023 providing a clear and structured career pathway for the supportive and assistive level workforce, pre-registration nursing and allied health professionals through to those practising at registration, enhanced, advanced, consultant levels of practice. 

The ACCEND Framework aims to address the lack of one nationally agreed competency and skills framework for nurses, allied health professionals and pharmacists, and the absence of a defined route for a nurse or AHP to have a career in cancer. The ACCEND Programme and Framework are the first of its kind by providing a career pathway, capabilities and aligned education, training and development. 

The ACCEND Framework comprises three components:

A career pathway: for the following levels of practice – supportive, assistive, pre-registration, registration, enhanced, advanced and consultant levels

Core cancer capabilities in practice: colour coded for practitioners at each level of practice

Education framework: setting a standard for core cancer knowledge for the workforce through defined learning outcomes and knowledge expectations in:

• ‘Foundations in cancer care’ for the Supportive, Assistive and Pre-registration levels of practice
• ‘Fundamentals in cancer care’ for the Registration, Enhanced, Advanced and Consultant levels of practice
• Qualification in Specialism/Postgraduate Certificate for Registration and Enhanced levels of practice.
• Alignment to national frameworks for advanced and consultant levels of practice
• The Education Framework offers guidance on education, training and development opportunities to achieve the core cancer knowledge, evidence the capabilities in practice and identify further learning to meet role requirements and career aspirations.

The ACCEND Framework can be useful to practitioners, employers, healthcare systems and education providers to inform:

• Personal Development Reviews/Appraisals/Revalidation.
• Role descriptors.
• Pre-registration curriculum.
• Continuing professional development/post-registration education mapping and commissioning.
• Service redesign and development.

Implementation guides are available on the ACCEND website. 

The NHS England ACCEND hub is accessible on the e-learning for Health platform. The Hub incudes resources including:

• The Foundations of Cancer Care - a nine module online course for anyone interested in learning more about cancer.
• A toolkit aimed at the supportive and assistive workforce including a ‘Principles of cancer care’  course, aligned to the ACCEND Framework.

Further developments to the NHS England ACCEND learning hub in 2024/2025 will include dedicated content developed for those at Registration, Enhanced towards Advanced levels (RETA) and those in Consultant and strategic leadership roles.

You can get involved in the ACCEND Community of Practice Webinars held bi-monthly. Launched in July 2024, the webinar enables sharing of how ACCEND is being implemented by services in different parts of the UK. Recordings from the community of practice meetings and other useful resources to support ACCEND implementation can be found via the NHS Futures Platform.

Planned developments for the ACCEND programme include:

• A baseline workforce survey across England.
• An update of the ACCEND Framework to include education and research career pathways. 
• Digitisation of the Framework to enhance engagement and ease of use of the framework for healthcare professionals, employers and education providers.
• Development of UK wide pre-registration cancer curricula guidance for Higher Education Institutions and education providers.

The impact of the ACCEND Programme and Framework has been significant. The Framework is recognised in the Long Term Workforce Plan and identified as a focus of activity for regional cancer alliances in England in 2024/5 workplans.

The RCN Cancer Forum continues to provide expertise to the ACCEND programme and implementation of the Framework through representation on the ACCEND Steering Group, and collaboration and engagement in the range of working groups focused on these developments.

Find out more about the ACCEND Programme.

If you have specific questions about ACCEND please contact the programme team at england.accend@nhs.net