The Experienced Practitioner Gateway was launched in January 2023, as a time-limited route for experienced Clinical Research Practitioners who do not hold a degree to access registration.

Since this date, 93 Clinical Research Practitioners have successfully passed through the Gateway and 57 of these eligible CRP’s now have progressed fully onto the Clinical Research Practitioner Register and the rest are in the process.  

Following agreement to a proposal presented to the CRP Register Advisory Group, we are pleased to announce that the Experienced Practitioner Gateway will remain open for another year, till January 2026. Continued operation will be reviewed in line with standardised education-based routes of access to registration currently in development. In the meantime however, applicants who don't have a degree, but do have the required amount of practitioner level experience and wish to become registered, are advised to begin their Experienced Practitioner Gateway eligibility application without delay. 

We would also like to say a huge thank-you to the verifiers who continue to support the Experienced Practitioner Gateway panels. The CRP workforce will continue to play such a vital role in the continuing national research effort and the strategy for future growth.

Over the upcoming months, we will be releasing anonymised examples of eligibility forms for the Gateway to enhance current application guidance. Please find the guidance here - https://www.ahcs.ac.uk/our-registers/clinical-research-practitioners/about-the-experienced-practitioner-gateway/

All applications need to be submitted five weeks prior to the Gateway panels, please refer to the website for panel dates: https://www.ahcs.ac.uk/registration/psa-accredited-register/clinical-research-practitioners/about-the-gateway/ 

Please be aware when submitting your portfolio on or close to the deadline, if there is any information missing, this may result in your portfolio going to the next panel, we will let you know if this is the case.

Please read all documentation in particular eligibility criteria before applying.

To start your Gateway application, please visit: https://crpregister.ahcs.ac.uk/ 

The Academy and the NIHR hold online drop in sessions via MS Teams, these dates can be found here.

You can locate your local Clinical Research Practitioner engagement lead here, they support the growing profession.

For help and guidance regarding the process, please email: crpadmin@ahcs.ac.uk

By Ruth Johns and Rachel Evans, AHCS-Registered Clinical Research Practitioners.

The West Midlands Clinical Research Practitioner (CRP) Engagement Lead and LCRN Workforce Development team have worked in collaboration with CRPs and managers in the region to create a forum to support the development of a local community of practice. The CRP Forums were launched on 10 April 2024, and to date three online forums have successfully been held.

These forums have provided a space for colleagues working in a CRP role and their managers, to learn and ask questions regarding the eligibility criteria and process of joining the CRP directory and application for registration on the Academy of Healthcare Science (AHCS) accredited register.

The first forum featured guest speaker Deirdre Brooking, providing a national CRP update.The forums have gone on to include a CRP’s reflective journey through the gateway route to registration and senior Research and Development managers have shared their inspiring CRP journeys. Along the way, hints and tips have been shared from registered CRPs and a CRP verifier on how to write and create a body of evidence for both application and continued registration with the AHCS CRP accredited register.

To date these forums have been a great success, with approximately 30 attendees at each event. They have received very positive feedback and provided suggestions for future areas of discussion.  After a summer break, the West Midlands CRP forum is returning in September for a full day event to connect CRPs across the West Midlands.