Health visitors are postgraduate qualified Specialist Community Public Health Nurses (SCPHN-HV), registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), with a background as either a Registered Nurse or Registered Midwife.
The NMC is the UK regulator for Registered Nurses, Midwives and Nursing Associates in the UK – and this includes SCPHN-HV. The NMC exists primarily to protect the public by making sure that only those who meet their requirements are allowed to practise as a nurse or midwife in the UK.
The NMC regulates the professions by:
1. Setting and promoting higher education and professional standards
2. Maintaining the register of professionals eligible to practise (checked by employers)
3. Maintenance of registration through revalidation process every 3 years
4. Investigating concerns about fitness to practise.
Practice Standards
The NMC Code contains professional standards that must be upheld. Regulatory standards are intended to be high level and outcome focused. They are translated by higher education institutions and their practice placement partners into more detailed curricula and programme learning outcomes.
In addition to the NMC Code, the standards relevant to health visitors (SCPHN-HV) are outlined in the following NMC standards:
Revalidation
Every three years, nurses and midwives need to renew their registration at the NMC through revalidation. Revalidation is about promoting good practice, as well as strengthening public confidence in the nursing and midwifery professions.
Revalidation includes arrangements for registered midwives who are also registered as SCPHNs.
All SCPHN-HVs need to complete 450 practice hours over the three years since they last renewed their registration or joined the register. Midwives who work wholly in a SCPHN role and do not undertake any work as a practising midwife can use their practice in their SCPHN role to meet the practice hours requirement. For further information please see How to revalidate with the NMC.
SCPHN-HVs need to meet a range of revalidation requirements to show that they are keeping their skills and knowledge up to date and maintaining safe and effective practice:
- 450 practice hours, or 900 hours if renewing two registrations (for example, as both a nurse and midwife)
- 35 hours of CPD including 20 hours of participatory learning
- Five pieces of practice-related feedback
- Five written reflective accounts
- Reflective discussion
- Health and character declaration
- Professional indemnity arrangement
- Confirmation.
The iHV can support your revalidation in a number of ways:
- Keep a record of your CPD in your iHV Portal on iHV Learn – and use this to evidence your ongoing learning and development with the NMC (Please note: the iHV is not a regulator – you will need to complete your NMC revalidation submission yourself) -🔒Member-only
- All iHV training and conferences are CPD accredited with participatory and non-participatory (learning completed individually) options to boost your CPD hours.
- Time spent engaging in iHV Insights, Networking events and Special Interest Groups can be used for participatory learning.
- Reading and reviewing iHV publications and research can be counted towards individual CPD activity (keep a record of the documents reviewed and your reviewer notes as evidence).
- Complete our iHV Reflections template as a tool to support your reflections on learning and development opportunities.