1. Experience from a Registered Public Health Practitioner
Who am I?
What my background is
Why I wanted to become a Registered Practitioner
How I organised myself and my work
Some tips from my experience
Some encouragement
I had been Community Safety and Offender Health Lead in Hertfordshire PH team since 2009 when I started the UKPHR scheme in the EoE.
Prior to this Hertfordshire PCT Primary Care Commissioning Lead, leading on GP, Community Pharmacy and Prison Health contracts. Before that a long career in nursing- Registred Nurse, District Nurse, School Nurse, Practice Nurse and Health Visitor.
I was used to demonstrating competence through training, accreditation and CPD so had lots of certificates of training-although some going back quite a few years. I’ll talk about that in more depth later

2. Why?
For me personally-
It brought together all the work I had been doing in Public Health
Sense of achievement
Recognition
Confidence boost
Enhances my CV for future employment
Quite a few colleagues in Hertfordshire went to the EoE launch in December 2014, but I was the only one to sign up to do it which was a disadvantage for me as I had no one to work with or to discuss practicalities, neither did I have a mentor. Colleagues were watching to see how I got on, since completing the work in December 2015, I have been encouraging my colleagues, now about 12 interested in the scheme.

3. Why?
For the Profession
Demonstrates that Public Health is an accredited and competent workforce, which can be trusted
Gives employers confidence
A critical mass of Registered Practitioners will nudge the rest
For me, coming from a background which has to be trained to a certain standard and registered as during my nursing career, I felt that people working in Public Health should also show to the public that they are competent by being Registered as such.
The more people working in Public Health on the Register will put pressure on those who arent and will give Registered Practitioners an employment advantage, especially during times of financial cut backs and fewer jobs.
I do feel though that the Registered Practitioner scheme could or should be part of a more defined career pathway which doesn’t currently exist.

4. Important First steps Complete self assessment form
Take plenty of time to do this as fully as possible
This forms basis for your portfolio
This will show if you have enough experience and evidence and also where your gaps are
I cant stress enough how important this is. It will help you decide what pieces of work you will use for your commentaries. I colour coded each indicator, then put that onto a grid to show me how many indicators would be in each commentary. Then you can decide which commentary to do first-eg the biggest, or the most recent piece of work or the one you enjoyed most, or the one with the most evidence-it’s your decision.
I did
Commentary 1: Offender health, demonstrating mainly health promotion and health improvement
Commentary 2: Alcohol and licensing, demonstrating policies, legislation, ethics and the law
Commentary 3: Domestic Abuse, demonstrating use of evidence, data, acting within limits of competence

5. Knowledge, Understanding, Application
Always remember that for each indicator you need to demonstrate evidence of knowledge, that you understand what you have learnt and how you have applied that knowledge
Writing style
For each indicator check and double check that you have fully demonstrated this. The writing style is in the first person-I did this, not we did this or this was done. It can take some time to get used to it if you haven't written like this before. Spell out how you gained the knowledge and then describe that you understand what you have learnt and how this has been applied in the piece of work you are writing about. It’s a bit like a driving test-be obvious even though it might seem exaggerated ie look, signal manoeuvre-

6. Evidence
Before I started, I collected my evidence together in files relating to each commentary
Don’t forget that you need evidence of how you got the knowledge and evidence of application
Do you have any gaps? if so how will you fill the gaps?
knowledge-if it’s by reading rather that certificated training, you will need to write a reflective piece- don’t be put off by that it doesn’t need to be too long-mine were roughly 1 side A4 or shorter.
Think of your gaps in knowledge-can you do an on line course? Attend a training event, or get one of your Consultants to do give a lecture or training session, or shadow a colleague and write it up as a reflective piece

7. Commentaries
Commentaries are a description of a piece of work you led on or were involved with-it’s like writing a story and then weaving in the indicators and evidence
Make sure you know how to set out the commentary before you start
The first commentary took me by far the longest amount of time-I went wrong because there was a set template we were expected to use and I didn’t!
Before submitting your commentaries, get someone such as your PDG lead or mentor to look through your work –they will have a fresh pair of eyes- most of my clarifications were quite minor but related to me not explaining my understanding of learning or fully how I applied the learning.

8. Time How much time does it take? A Lot ! It is complex
Think about making a project plan with timeframes
Try hard not to get behind as it could be difficult to catch up
Do you have any work or home commitments that would prevent you from dedicating enough time to the scheme?
The time it takes will vary depending on variables such as experience, how competent a writer you are, how many reflective pieces you need to do etc
The first commentary took me a long time and I had to redo it twice, the 3rd one practically flew off the page and took a fraction of the time compared to the 1st one. It is complex and has to be rigorous to be worth the Registration. You could try to negotiate some dedicated time from work extra to the 4 PDG days-Scotland Practitioners were given a certain number of additional days. Arrange your PGDs to be earlier on rather than spaced too far ahead- you will need the support early on rather that later. If you can, get a learning set together. I found that I needed to give myself at least 2 hours each time I set aside time to write. It is complex and requires concentration. It felt to me like doing a jigsaw, weaving all the indicators into the commentaries, and was actually fun when it worked well. It also reinforced to me just how much work I had been responsible for developing. Consider what else is happening in your work or home life that might conflict with time needed to do this.

9. And Now?
Looking back it was time consuming, it certainly wasn’t easy but:
I feel a great sense of achievement
I am the first person in Hertfordshire to be Registered. I believe it gives me an advantage in applying for jobs and I really would encourage you to do it

10. Any Questions?